For all the guff Palin has had to contend with and all the guff starting to come Perry's way, I still think the two of them are the winning ticket going forward, America's A-Team!
Posted on 09/03/2011 10:30:52 PM PDT by smoothsailing
September 3, 2011
Promising she was ready to have a "adult conversation" about the specifics of what needed to be done to right America, Palin set a marker for herself:
"It requires deeds not words, it's not enough for politicians to throw around some vague generalities..."
And then went on to speak in... vague generalities. (Note: All quotes were taken directly as she spoke, and might not be completely word-for-word accurate.)
Her five point plan could have been taken from just about any candidates' Standard Stump Speech, and I include Jon Huntsman when I say "any candidate."
Here are some of the detailed, specific non-vague-generalities highlights:
So far it's a "bona fide workin' man's plan" which is all about "empowerment.""The way forward is no more politics as usual."
"All power not specifically delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution is reserved for the states, or we the people... so let's enforce the 10th amendment."
"We must repeal obamacare."
"Get the government out of the way, let the private sector breathe and expand..."
"No more runaway debt, we must priorize and cut. Cancel unused stimulus funds."
"The reality is we will have entitlement reform, either we do it ourselves or the world capital markets will."
Now, this advocacy for entitlement reform is semi-gutsy, but it is obviously not "detailed." And in fact most candidates talk of "reforming" entitlements. Few are very specific.
"We have the highest federal corporate tax rates in the world, do you know it's higher than China?"
Okay, I do not believe a single candidate does not advocate lowering the corporate tax rate. Including Huntsman.
She wants to cut it down to zero, which is at least a detail, and is at least not a gimme.
To pay for this, she wants to eliminate "loopholes and bailouts and corporate cronyism."
Remember, she's going to give you an "adult conversation," rich in detail, unlike other poltiicians, who speak in "vague generalities."
This speech was said to be two things, and hinted to a third.
First, it was supposed to be a "major announcement." If there was a major announcement here, I missed it entirely.
Second, it was supposed to be a "full-throated defense of the Tea Party." It wasn't. It was platitudes and bromides sprinkled with flattering the crowd.
What would a "full-throated (and "major") defense of the Tea Party" sound like? Well, for one, I'd think it should be persuasive to non-Tea Partiers. For another, I think it would be thoughtful, rather than off-the-cuff standard flatteries. For a third, I think it should be novel or new.
I could imagine a good speech about the Tea Party. I could imagine a speech going all the way back to the Town Halls during and after the Revolutionary War, when citizens were actually engaged in what their government and their country would be. I could imagine a speech detailing the patriotic conscientiousness of making sure that what was won by blood should not be lost by disregard.
And I could imagine such a speech noting that for decades, American citizens had largely abandoned this commitment to engagement with their own political fates, and a Media-Government Elite filled the vacuum, and over time, became less and less connected with the citizens they were supposedly serving.
And I could imagine a speech then noting that this Elite, having gotten cozy deciding the fate of the nation, reacts hysterically and angrily when citizens decide they want to take back their God-given right to decide the course of human events for themselves, viciously attacking Americans who had the audacity to say "We're taking our responsibilities as citizens seriously again, after too long leaving it them to you, those who craved power and assumed it and now cry like stuck animals when we attempt to take back what was always ours."
Maybe you don't think that's good. Maybe that strikes you as pedestrian and done to death.
But if you're going to claim a "full throated defense of the Tea Party," shouldn't there be something beyond the typical praise of the "workin' man" and the standard-issue statements that we're the ones who actually produce wealth?
That stuff is true. But it's unremarkable. Certainly it fails to live up to the advance billing.
Third, what was implied was that Palin would make an announcement about her candidacy. She hinted about this "See you on September 3rd!," a campaign-like commercial promised.
And she never said publicly, "Although I am giving a policy speech, I will not be making any kind of declaration on September 3rd." Such a statement was leaked by "sources close to the governor," but is there something "unconservative" about simply making one's plans known?
So that other people don't waste their time?
Instead, after the encouragement of interest, and the cultivation of speculation about what that "major announcement" might be, it was a very standard-issue and not-particularly-important or novel stump speech.
Some might find this sort of coyness and games-playing "brilliant" or the like. I don't.
Some may claim she "played a trick on the media." Yes, the media. And everyone else too.
David Letterman used to make a point of wasting "network time" on dumb stuff. The in-joke was "Can you believe we are doing a network broadcast and yet we're just showing videos of squirrels?"
I found that funny, for a time. Until I realized he wasn't just wasting the network's time with the squirrel videos; he was wasting my time, too. I stopped considering myself one of the people "inside the joke," laughing at NBC, and started considering myself one of the people being punked with time-wasting exercises.
It also occurred to me that as long as people like me were tuning in for the squirrel videos, the NBC corporate suits were happy. They didn't care if Letterman was wasting the audience's time. They sold commercial space either way.
So who was actually getting his chain yanked there? The media was getting paid, which is all they care about.
Palin got lots of attention for a speech that turned out to be extremely bullet-point and frankly trivial.
I don't consider this an achievement. I just consider it manipulative, and I don't just laugh it off as playing a prank on the stupid media.
A lot of people traveled a very long way and sat out in the rain for something that was suggested just might be The Big Announcement. A lot of people watched on TV.
And what they saw was a no-brainer stump speech.
Who's being pranked here? The media in attendance were all paid to be there. Their travel arrangements were comped. They'll get back their vacation day. And it was either covering this or covering Jon Huntsman.
What about everyone else?
Ace of Spades is an establishment site...there are a lot of Mittbots on that site in fact. Ace has never been in Sarah’s cornor for the most part and THAT’S THE FACT.
Yeah I agree..that site has gone off the deep end. WOW they must really be scared that she will run and dethrone their beloved Romney
Rick Perry was prepared to create a million refugees in Texas by giving imminent domain and development rights to a foreign corporation over land four football fields wide. Sounds like something out of communist country.
Rick Perry was going to make guinea pigs out of millions of Texas school children (all preteen sluts I guess?) with Guardasil (which had not been tested on kids) which means that he was mandating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for a politically connected Merck.
Perry opposes a border wall. Perry opposes not giving benefits to illegals. Perry also favors a “guest worker program” that will definitely lead to amnesty.
Perry is already distancing himself from his book published last year “Fed Up”. Perry helped break ground for an Islamic Center in Plano TX.
Rick Perry spent tens of millions of our tax dollars doling subsidies out his own version of “stimulus” to corporations.
Rick Perry is not a conservative.
So the Ass of Holes is unhappy?
Boo-Hoo.
There was no “there” there.
The speech was bigtime overrated. If it were given by any other candidate, it wouldn’t have registered more than a blip on the radar.
Just the word “Palin” on Ace of Spades gets angry responses....You have to tough it out to defend Palin over there
Those guys are a bigger pack of babies than our group of thread spamming trolls, but not by much.
have the other candidates given us specifics more than Palin, yet Palin get attacked for not giving more
The speech was surpose to defend Tea Party. Says who? Says fake news report before the speech leaked by anonymous sources?
I think it can be accurately said that Perry has switched positions from bad ones to good ones.
That would put him in the same league as Mitt Romney and that’s something to think about.
I’m leaning toward Perry at the moment after Palin was my go-to candidate until recently, but this dissection of her remarks is as vague as the speech it is criticizing.
I don’t care about sites that are sympathetic to a candidate—who needs cheerleading? I want to see EVERY candidate’s positions dissected. But this was a statement of intent, and if it was filled with details, this writer would be complaining about how boring and “insider” it was.
She spoke in simple ideas, but they’re GOOD ideas.
Which good ones?
Guardasil?
TTC?
Border wall? Illegal benefits?
pay to play?
doling out tax dollars to corporations?
which are the good positions?
So-call Right leaning folks and blogger resorting to Leftist talking points you really have to doubt their integrity over there
The article in question is written by a site that has its mnd made up already for RINO Romney.
“If it were given by any other candidate...”
Here’s the thing: she’s not, as of now, a candidate.
And that is why I don’t understand the point of the speech, which as good as it was and as much as I agree with the things she stated, was no Gettysburg Address.
I’m very much afraid Palin will try an independent run. I’ve said this like 3 times today, because that is my real fear.
And if she’s thinking about doing that, she may as well endorse Obama and be done with it.
What I’m trying to say is that on Guardasil and the Trans Texas Corridor for example, Perry has backed away from his support for those.
His supporters make much of that when he is challenged about those matters.
I see his switching sides as evidence of flip flopping ala Romney.
No. Perry saw that he was losing and backed off. He never stopped supporting them.
Your view could be right but I’m trying to show that the best picture Perry apologists can present to us is that Perry is a switcher of positions like Romney.
I just watched the speech, and here are some of the points that I got out of it:
1. Don’t rely on the political class to address our problems. It’s up to us. Keep up the Tea Party activism.
2. Repeal Obamacare. Don’t let Congress move away from that goal.
3. Focus on producing our energy at home rather than buying it from other nations. This will give us the strength to pull back from the precipice and create myriads of new jobs.
4. Make a distinction between small business, which creates honest jobs, and large corporations that give large political contributions in exchange for having special benefits written into the laws, especially the tax code.
5. Eliminate the corporate income tax. At the same time, eliminate federal subsidies for businesses.
6. We have to make significant entitlement reform, because the world isn’t accepting the status quo any longer and if we don’t make the changes now we will lose control and see other changes forced upon us. At the same time, the money put in was put in by the working people of this country, and it was demagoguery for President Obama to suggest that he might not send checks to retired people if the debt ceiling was not raised.
7. The political class is not going to reduce government spending. They live on the system of payoffs to their friends. We the people have to force them to do it.
It seemed like a pretty specific speech that contained both an intellectual reorientation toward state and local government and self-help and a cynicism toward promises by career politicians that they can change their political viewpoint and work toward a smaller centralized government and greater self-sufficiency.
Ace may have been miffed that Sarah Palin didn’t announce that she is running, but I don’t think he should have expected a detalied line by line list of budget changes. This was a pretty solid statement of principles with the detail of the 0% corporate income tax and elimination of government subsidies thrown in. I think it was a good speech.
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