Posted on 08/15/2013 11:25:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Five years after running for vice president on the Republican ticket with U.S. Sen. John McCain, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin showed she still has a following as she heaped praise on the people of the Upper Midwest at the ninth annual Ag PhD Field Day at the Hefty farms near Baltic.
With more than 5,000 people listening to her talks at two different locations on the farm July 25, Palin got the biggest applause when she said, “I would argue what farmers need most is for politicians to butt out and just leave them alone.”
Palin, who is said to be considering a run for the U.S. Senate in Alaska next year, said the farm bill is a good example as it’s loaded with 1930s-era relics and would churn out more regulations for farmers.
“The problem is a big, arrogant government,” she said, “when government is in every aspect of your life and in your business and collecting so much data on you.”
“It’s a bloated, out-of-control government, and it’s not just a Republican or Democrat thing, but big, stupid government making our life harder, not easier.”
She talked about an Illinois farmer who told President Obama that he preferred starting his day in a tractor or combine cab rather than filling out forms or applications for permits.
She said Brian and Darren Hefty talk about the “weed of the week” in their television and radio programming, and she suggested that Washington, D.C., should employ a reformer who would find a government program or bureaucrat that isn’t needed and call it the “weed of the week.”
She also got a big laugh and applause when she said she rather would be governed by the South Dakota Farm Bureau than “the bunch we have in Washington, D.C., right now.”
Palin, who was accompanied by her daughter, Piper, to the event, said farming has been called the “profession of hope.”
“That’s what I see when I visit. I see optimistic, good, hard-working and patriotic Americans who believe the tomorrows are better than today.
“I think that’s what our farmers give us. It’s the real hope, not this hopey-changey thing we hear from Washington.”
Palin said the “elitists on both coasts” call this area “flyover country.” However, she said, she thinks of it instead as the heartland and the salt of the Earth.
Using food metaphors, she likened this region’s people to the beef patties inside a Big Mac or the good, creamy filling in the middle of an Oreo cookie. “You’re the meat and the sweet stuff.”
She said she hasn’t been at many ag appreciation events over the years. In fact, the last time was at the Alaska State Fair when her cell phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize after her visit to the ag tent.
She went to a nearby tent at the fair, and it was McCain asking her whether she wanted to be his running mate.
With her husband working far away at Prudhoe Bay, her Down syndrome son Trigg only 15 weeks old, a son overseas in the military and a daughter who had just told her she was pregnant, Palin said, “Yeah, I have nothing else going on. Sure, why not?”
“Well, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to,” Palin said about the election. “But I guess things turn out the way they are supposed to be.”
She spends most of her time in Alaska now, and she said that although fisheries, gas, oil and minerals are the main industries, Alaska has a vibrant agriculture industry.
She mentioned in particular the cold-weather vegetables that grow to huge sizes in the land of the midnight sun during the summer months.
She said Alaska holds the world record cabbage at 127 pounds. She also mentioned that state residents have grown a 96-pound kohlrabi, 82-pound rutabaga, 42-pound beet, 39-pound turnip, 35-pound broccoli and 18.9-pound carrot.
“That’s the size of a salmon,” she said of the carrot.
“We grow ’em big, but of course it’s nothing like you all produce for the U.S. and the rest of the world.”
Although farming is changing with all of the technology, she said what hasn’t changed is the American farmer.
“You not only feed America, but you are what has helped make America so special, so exceptional. You helped build America.”
In all, an estimated 6,500 people from 30 states, including a busload from Pennsylvania, attended the field day, the largest such event in the U.S. and the largest for the Hefty family since it started the event.
Darren Hefty said that Palin’s appearance wasn’t meant to be political, but with less than 1 percent of the U.S. population involved in farming, it was a chance to talk about ag issues with an influential person.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democrat, was the main speaker last year.
“She was certainly a draw,” Hefty said. “We wanted her to speak to farmers about how their voices could be heard more effectively in Washington. I thought she delivered a good message about the importance of agriculture to our country and how farmers are viewed in a positive light by the general population.
“It was just an encouraging message that what we are doing is being seen by most people and we just need to unify our voice and speak to our legislators.”
If she had it to do over, knowing what she knows about McCain now, there is no way she would sign on as his running mate.
NO.WAY.
It’s time to transfer the forest service to another department and eliminate the rest of the Department of Agriculture.
I can’t imagine what Wesley Clark had to say to the farmers that was the least bit pertinent.
Sarah on the other hand is a kindred spirit.
Really? It made her a household name.
She campaigned for his reelection. And she’s still praising his ass, she did it just the another day.
No sale.
Did you think I was trying to sell something?
Wrong.
And I’m talking the political McCain, on the issues and on caving to liberals, that she would not run with today, not some personal comments she might make, silly.
Lord, I admire this woman. And though she will never be forgotten as helping McLame win his seat over J. D. Hayworth, I’ve prayed that one day it will be possible to forgive her. Time passing helps, but it still hurts a bit.
She DID NOT help McCain win his seat over Hayworth.
Quit the Urban Myth Stuff. She showed up at ONE McCain Fundraiser. Hayworth was not up to the task. Geez...
Ever heard the old saying, you leave with the one that brung you? If McCain never picked her as his V.P., she would be just one of many Republican Governors.
What’s next, she’s a quitter?
Palin / Cruz 2016. Sounds good to me.
Ditto.
;-\
I think Palin is right. We need to get the government out of farming entirely. The free market will provide all the regulation farming needs. Do away with farm subsidies with its distortions, its corruption of market forces, and its paperwork and productivity will soar.
Farm subsidies are nothing more than “Vote” buyers.
Farm subsidies are nothing more than “Vote” buyers.
Yup. You can't speak out against crony capitalism and yet remain silent on the topic farm subsidies unless you're a hypocrite.
Permits for what?
What about food inspectors?
Permits to purchase, store and apply pesticides, for one thing. Many of them require a federal permit to even purchase.
I imagine the same now goes for some fertilizers (e.g., ammonium nitrate).
Federal permits to draw irrigation water from a nearby creek or river would be another one. Or to place a culvert in a drainage.
One year when I was running a pecan orchard, I counted a total of 72 federal permits or reports that I was required to complete.
Really, she really hates him now, huh?
She “hates him now, huh?”
Nope. Didn’t say that.
She disagrees with his political actions on just about every issue across the board. Tell me where her ideology lines up with McCain’s. She lines herself up with Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, whom McCain hates and calls “wacko birds”.
It’s really simple, easy. She’s avoided confronting him on that, because he picked her and has said nice things about her. She can say something positive about his middle east efforts by cloaking her comments in words that are generically complimentary. Such as the words you cite.
It’s easy for people, such as those who worship at McCain’s military service and POW alter, to come up with bromides such as how he’s trying to help security in the ME. Like a bull in a China Closet, yeah, sure, he only makes things worse but, ya know, he’s trying, he cares, yada yada. I sound a bit like Rush but there it is.
I’m not talking about that stuff. I’m saying that the reign of terror McCain has gone on since being re-elected in AZ on issue after issue and on caving to the liberal enemy is the opposite of what Sarah Palin stands for with the tea party and her issue comments on Fox News.
I’m saying this McCain version and Sarah Palin could not be on a ticket together. The McCain who portrayed himself for years as a Ronald Reagan Conservative Republican - a misportrayal - though, she did get on board with.
The Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee-DESPISING John McCAIn, uh, NO. Sarah Palin could not, would not.
McCain has gone off the deep end. The very, very DEEPEST of ends. Any bromide she throws his way now comes by the hardest. Is the thinnest and tiniest of fig leafs. Nobody can cover up with McCain is now. And with McCain, not only is it clearly LEFTIST caving, it is some kind of personal crusade to make himself the center of everything, just like for Obama, it’s all about Obama.
He’s always done this. Just now, it’s more extreme and more troubling than ever. She has to be thanking her lucky stars McCain was never elected President of the United States. But will she dare hint at such, openly, of course not.
She’s still cowtowing to McCain, personally. But you tell me where she and McCain line up, they don’t. He expresses hatred for all that she expresses love for, politically. She’s not stupid, she knows that.
It’s for personal considerations, the political issues aside, that she pretends otherwise.
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