CNN: You seemed to be very much on your game. You get huge crowds. Even bigger crowds than [Republican presidential candidate Sen.] John McCain. Why is that?
Sarah Palin: I think it's what I'm representing and what the message is and that is true reform of government that is so needed, and having a representative of someone who has a track record of showing that, yeah, you can, you can do this, you can reform, you can put government back on the side of the people, you can fight corruption. You can actually take steps towards helping our nation become energy-independent and all those things that we're talking about. I think that more and more Americans are realizing that, well, good, we have a candidate who has actually done some of those things and it's not just, talkin' the talk, she's gonna tell us how she's done this.
I would have expected this sort of question from Neal Boortz or Hugh Love Hewitt or some such, but there you have it. "Gubna, why are you so awesomely awesome, even more so than your mavericky running mate? Is it because you graciously allowed him to stay on top of the ticket?" Sheesh.
But what is her answer? The usual boilerplate about what a "reformer" she is. She won't specifically bring up the "thanks but no thanks" Bridge to Nowhere lie anymore, but what else is there? Her only "step" toward energy independence is the "drill baby drill" chant. She does not, has not, "[told] us how she's done this", nor, more importantly, how any of it would apply outside the politically inbred confines of Frontierland.
CNN: Yeah. Uh, Joe the plumber?
Palin: Yeah.
CNN: Socialism, it's come up on the campaign trail now.
Palin: Sure.
CNN: Governor, is Barack Obama a socialist?
Palin: I'm not gonna call him a socialist, but, as Joe the plumber had suggested, in fact he came right out and said it sounds like socialism to him and he speaks for so many Americans who are quite concerned now, after hearing finally what Barack Obama's true intentions are with his tax and economic plan, and that is, to take more from small businesses, more from our families, and then redistribute that according to his priorities. That is, that is not good for the entrepreneurial spirit that has built this great country. That is not good for our economy, certainly it's not good for the opportunities that our small businesses should have, to keep more of what they produce, in order to hire more people, create more jobs. That's what gets the economy going. So, finally Joe the plumber and as we talked about today in the speech, too, he's representing, you know, Jane the engineer and Molly the dental hygienist and Chuck the teacher and, and all these good, hard-working Americans who are, finally, were able to hear in very plain talk the other night, what Barack Obama's intentions were to redistribute wealth.
It was pretty clear from the get-go in the context of Obama's phrasing that "spreading the wealth" was more broadly implied as maybe it's time the assholes who've been picking your pockets all these years and blowing up your 401(k) need a shakedown. Not too unreasonable under current circumstances. Nobody's entrepreneurial spirit is going to be shitcanned by the knowledge that incomes -- not revenues, which Wurzelbacher the Ringer couldn't seem to distinguish -- over $250K are going to get tapped slightly more than before. The idea that this is some sort of confiscatory redistributive policy in the offing is hysterical.
And nobody's fooled by your ringer, dearie, at least nobody who wasn't already on board. They're not after Joe the Plumber or Joe Six-tooth or Bob the Builder or Tito the Screaming Douchebag; they're after this Joe, and that's exactly what they're getting.
Skipping past her injecting her latest Joe Biden stump riff into the mix, let's get to the "apology" at the end:
CNN: You've talked about America. And certain parts of America, that are maybe more American than other parts of American, Are there?
Palin: Ehhh, I don't want that misunderstood. No, I do not want that misunderstood. You know, when I go to these rallies and we see the patriotism just shining through these people's faces and the Vietnam veterans wearing their hats so proudly and they have tears in their eyes as we sing our national anthem and it is so inspiring and I say that this is true America, you get it, you understand how important it is that in the next four years we have a leader who will fight for you. I certainly don't want that interpreted as one area being more patriotic or more American than another. If that's the way it's come across, I apologize.
Bullshit. It came across exactly the way it was meant to come across, to incite rural crowds with the frisson of resentment at know-it-all city slickers. This campaign has done nothing but appeal to people's baser impulses, to gin up a snide, unseemly hostility among people whose states are statistically on the taking end of things. They talk about self-sufficiency while taking more federal tax dollars than they put in, tax dollars that are put in by coastal elite state that get back much less than their share.
And they talk tough about gettin' them al Qaeda fellers, but not one of them, in their jingoistic fury, bothers to wonder why exactly it is that New York City -- the place that actually got hit by these bastards, not your Piggly Wiggly in Squatter's Gulch -- are pro-Obama to a degree that's not even laughably close. In fact, regardless of the issue, in the months this dreadful thing has gone on, I honestly cannot recall a single person at a single Republican rally who could make their case without this aphasic mad-libbery wingnut-bingo of Ayers-Wright-Muslim-Rezko-celebrity.
And now the rallies seem more like chattering hordes of red-assed baboons seen on National Geographic specials, except perhaps even less coherent and reasoned. Palin's a huge reason for that, obviously, lowering the bar in what her campaign really has to offer, as opposed to merely attempting to detract by smear. Her interview may be more civil, but is not any more reality-based or intelligible in terms of practical aspects.
No comments:
Post a Comment