On yesterday's talk shows, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham "defended" the indefensible Sarah Palin.
John McCain on "Meet the Press" with Tom Brokaw, said, among other things:
Sarah Palin has already returned a third of the clothes bought for her by the RNC. (Wait, Sarah said most of them were still on the plane! And to where did she return them? Needless to say, Brokaw, who thinks McCain's the "best," did not ask those questions.)
Sarah Palin lives a "frugal" life, said McCain. She and her family are not wealthy. (Remember, now, that wealthy to John McCain means you make $5 million a year!)
"I don't defend her, I praise her," said McCain. "She is a role model to millions and millions and millions of Americans." (McCain did not elaborate on what
kind of role model she was.)
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), was even more fawning that McCain. But then, Graham is a bit...you know...fawning himself. Actually, it appears that Graham is living in some alternative reality. On ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," he said that Palin has actually benefited the GOP ticket! "Sarah," said Graham, has "energized our base better than anybody we could have picked, and we needed that."
Oh hum.
Let's see how Palin is energizing the base ("base" being a euphemism for "mad dogs"). Sam Stein, writing at the Huffington Post put it this way:
"Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama's tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country 'where the people are not free.'"
Here's part of Palin's speech:
"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, youir investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record ... Higher taxes, more government, misuing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put out trust in you."
I'm not sure if Mr. Stein is aware that these are the talking points of the extremist Christian right. This is the crap (and it is all CRAP!) that comes right out of the James Dobson camp. Sarah Palin is simply mimicking what her mentors want her to say, those mentors who believe God is helping them put Sarah Palin in the White House (eventually) to preside over the "end-times" when Jesus comes back to kill all the infidels and establish a righteous government.
Mr. Stein points out how ignorant Palin really is. The McCain/Palin ticket supports a progressive tax system..."In fact, back in 2000, the Arizona Republican said rich people paid more in taxes because they could affort to do so.
"'I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children, and they're the ones that I would support tax cuts for first."
Hmmm. Maybe McCain's changed his mind. While he still supports a progressive tax system, it shouldn't be too "progressive." He has vowed to extend the Bush tax package which brings relief to the rich on the backs of the poor and middle class.
In the end, though, you have to jump through a lot of insane hoops to defend Sarah Palin. It would be hard to find a vice presidential candidate within recent memory who is as sullenly and stubbornly ignorant and hateful and deceitful as she is. Even Dan Quayle doesn't come close.
Frankly, I never gave Tom Brokaw much thought. He was an anchor on NBC News and seemed to do his job fairly well, and he wrote a book about how great people were during WWII, and, well, he was a TV fixture...
