Palin Interview - Sept 12, 2011
VanSusteren: ... [Bachmann] said that the reason that Governor Perry said it, or she suggested it strongly, was because of a campaign contribution, that someone in his office or a prior employee went to work for the drug manufacturer. ...PALIN: Well, someone? That someone, as Michele Bachmann pointed out, was Governor Perry's former chief of staff, who then went to work for a drug company who made the drug that would be required of the Texan government to mandate that, that our young daughters would have to be inoculated against potential disease from the company that his former chief of staff was lobbying for. That's crony capitalism.
That's part of the problem that we have in this country, is that people are afraid, even within our own party, to call one another out on that.
True reform and fighting the corruption and fighting the crony capitalism is a tough thing to do within your own party. You have to go up against the big guns. And they will try to destroy you when you call them out on the mistakes that they have made. Believe me, I know that. I have the bumps and the bruises to prove it because that's what I have been doing for the last 20 years, local, state, and then on the VP trail, at different levels of government, calling out the corruption in government.
Michele Bachmann tried to make that point tonight. And watch, she's going to get -- potentially, she's going to get crucified by some in the party who say, "Don't, you know, don't' violate Reagan's 11th Commandment" and don't call somebody out in your own party on something like that.
Well, no, we have to call one another out on things that have led to the crony capitalism, to the favors, to the back door dealings that have led to, on a state and a federal level, this distrust of government. We the people have great distrust of our federal government, especially right now because we see these things that go on, and people seem too afraid to call one another out on them. How are we ever going to reform the system and be able to restore what's good and fair and right about America unless we do hold one another accountable? That's what Michele was trying to do. ...
Let me go back to that issue with Governor Perry. I was governor of Alaska at the time that that issue came down, and I told our health and human services department Alaska was not going to mandate immunizations for our teenage daughters.
And there had to have been something to that whole issue because it just didn't sound like Governor Perry. Governor Perry was, you know, the proverbial anti-government type of maverick there in Texas, and yet on this issue, he decided that he was going to know better than a parent was going to know in terms of what the health care or health benefit would be for their teenage daughters. So I knew there was something to it.
And remember when the media went a little bit crazy and demanded to see my 25,000 e-mails that I had written during my term as governor. In those e-mails, there is proof of there that the issue arose while I was governor of Alaska. And the e-mails reflect my -- my principle there was, No, government, stay out of the lives of family decisions like that, and do not tell a parent that their daughter must be immunized.
So we know. I knew even at that time something was up with that issue, and now we're finding that, yes, something was up with that issue. And it was a -- it was kind of an illustration or a big of evidence of some crony capitalism.
Thanks for the information. I had heard bits and pieces here and there but what you posted clarified everything.