Sarah Palin: Why I'm Speaking at the Tea Party Convention

Governor Palin has penned an op-ed in USA Today regarding her up-coming speech at the Tea Party convention:

Later this week I'll head to Nashville, where I'll have the honor of speaking with members of the Tea Party movement. I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility. This movement is truly a grassroots, organic effort. It's not a top-down organization; it's a ground-up call to action that already has both political parties rethinking the way they do business.

From the town halls last summer to the protests and marches in the fall to the game-changing recent elections, it has been inspiring to see real people — not politicos or inside-the-Beltway professionals — speak out for common-sense conservative policies and values. As with all grassroots efforts, the nature of this movement means that sometimes the debates are loud and the organization is messier than that of a polished, controlled machine. Legitimate disagreements take place about tone and tactics. That's OK, because this movement is about bigger things than politics or organizers.

The soul of the Tea Party is the people who belong to it — everyday Americans who grow our food, run our small businesses, teach our children how to read, serve the less fortunate and fight our wars. They're folks in small towns and cities across this nation who saw what was happening to our country and decided to get involved. Thank God for them. Many of these good Americans had never been involved in their government before, but now they attend town hall meetings and participate in online forums. They write letters to the editor. They sign up to be precinct leaders and run for local office and support other independent patriots. They have the courage to stand up and speak out.

Their vision is what drew me to the Tea Party movement. They believe in the same principles that guided my work in public service — whether I was working on the PTA and city council or serving as a mayor, commissioner or governor. I look forward to meeting some of these great Americans this weekend.

Recently, some have tried to portray this movement as a commercial endeavor rather than the grassroots uprising that it is. Those who do so don't understand the frustration everyday Americans feel when they see their government mortgaging their children's future with reckless spending. The spark of patriotic indignation that inspired those who fought for our independence and those who marched peacefully for civil rights has ignited once again. You can't buy such a sentiment. You can't AstroTurf it. It springs from love of country and the knowledge that we can make a difference if we just stand up and stand together.

I thought long and hard about my participation in this weekend's event. At the end of the day, my decision came down to this: It's important to keep faith with people who put a little bit of their faith in you. Everyone attending this event is a soldier in the cause. Some of them will be driving hundreds of miles to Nashville. I made a commitment to them to be there, and I am going to honor it.

But participation won't be limited to those in Nashville who have a ticket. It's much bigger than that. Because the Tea Party movement is spread out across the country — with no central offices or annual events — this is an opportunity to connect with like-minded folks. Yes, there will be speeches given in a room in Nashville. But we'll also be speaking with thousands of Americans watching online at twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA, or through various news outlets. And the conversation will continue on my Facebook page.

I will not benefit financially from speaking at this event. My only goal is to support the grassroots activists who are fighting for responsible, limited government — and our Constitution. In that spirit, any compensation for my appearance will go right back to the cause.

The nature of the Tea Party movement means there may never be a "perfectly orchestrated" event: Democracy in action doesn't come with a manual. But we must not get caught up in the politics or the controversies that some hope will distract from the heart of the movement. The focus must remain on our ideas and beliefs, and on supporting those ideas and beliefs however we can.

This weekend, it's Nashville, but in March, I'll head to Searchlight, Nev., for the kickoff rally at the Tea Party Express III. In April, I'll be in Boston for a Tea Party gathering there. Across the country, tea-partiers will be sharing our vision for America's future, a vision that promotes common sense solutions to out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch political establishment.

The process may not always be pretty or perfect, but the message is loud and clear: We want a government worthy of the fine Americans that it serves. And we're going to keep spreading that message one convention, one town hall, one speech and one election at a time.

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Sarah Palin: Freedom, Influence, Security Shrink as Budget Balloons

Via Facebook

The White House recently announced its pricey Childhood Obesity Initiative to tell us what we should feed our kids. Helpful I’m sure – but most Americans would rather see government focus on other important areas right now. We know what our kids should eat: more healthy food, less junk food. There – we just saved Washington a ton of money by announcing that finding on personal responsibility.

What does demand our full attention is the newly released $3,800,000,000,000 federal budget. The president and Congress have a huge job tackling the problem staring right at us as we look at a budget we obviously can’t afford. America’s freedom and security are endangered as we become beholden to other nations, thanks to ballooning deficits and debt. One congressman just warned that our nation may become insolvent if we don’t make better decisions starting now. As noted in a New York Times article today, unless “miraculous growth” or miraculous unforeseen change is on the horizon, America’s freedom, influence, and security will continue to erode. (Personally, at this point I believe it wouldn’t hurt to ramp up our nation’s humble request for the divine miraculous change and wisdom we’ll need to see us through.)

Getting our arms around this will take all of us working together, making sacrifices, taking more personal responsibility, and sending elected leaders to Washington that we can trust. That’s why some of us may come across as strident in our efforts to call out the White House and Congress. We want to trust you, Washington; we want to work with you, but we cannot stomach some of the things being rammed down our throats. Your actions to pile on more debt make no sense, so we must question your motives and intentions. For instance, there’s just no room for expensive, dangerous, and unsustainable new initiatives like Obamacare, Cap and Tax, and a dramatically expanded federal payroll. These government-growing proposals will obviously cause more problems than they’ll solve. They are just further steps towards insolvency.

Steps towards insolvency are steps away from freedom. They’re steps towards destruction. It’s the reason we ask why we should swallow what's coming out of Washington.

The Wall Street Journal has a brilliant column by Gerald Seib today. It reads in part:

The U.S. government this year will borrow one of every three dollars it spends, with many of those funds coming from foreign countries. That weakens America’s standing and its freedom to act; strengthens China and other world powers including cash-rich oil producers; puts long-term defense spending at risk; undermines the power of the American system as a model for developing countries; and reduces the aura of power that has been a great intangible asset for presidents for more than a century.

“We’ve reached a point now where there’s an intimate link between our solvency and our national security,” says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior national-security adviser in both the first and second Bush presidencies. “What’s so discouraging is that our domestic politics don’t seem to be up to the challenge. And the whole world is watching.”

In the 21st-century world order, the classic, narrow definition of national-security threats already has expanded in ways that make traditional foreign-policy thinking antiquated. The list of American security concerns now includes dependence on foreign oil and global warming, for example.

Consider just four of the ways that budget deficits also threaten American’s national security:

• They make America vulnerable to foreign pressures.

The U.S. has about $7.5 trillion in accumulated debt held by the public, about half of that in the hands of investors abroad.

Aside from the fact that each American next year will chip in more than $800 just to pay interest on this debt, that situation means America’s government is dependent on the largesse of foreign creditors and subject to the whims of international financial markets. A foreign government, through the actions of its central bank, could put pressure on the U.S. in a way its military never could. Even under a more benign scenario, a debt-ridden U.S. is vulnerable to a run on the American dollar that begins abroad.

Either way, Mr. Haass says, “it reduces our independence.”

• Chinese power is growing as a result.

A lot of the deficit is being financed by China, which is selling the U.S. many billions of dollars of manufactured goods, then lending the accumulated dollars back to the U.S. The IOUs are stacking up in Beijing.

So far this has been a mutually beneficial arrangement, but it is slowly increasing Chinese leverage over American consumers and the American government. At some point, the U.S. may have to bend its policies before either an implicit or explicit Chinese threat to stop the merry-go-round.

Just this weekend, for example, the U.S. angered China by agreeing to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion in arms. At some point, will the U.S. face economic servitude to China that would make such a policy decision impossible?

Please read the rest of Seib’s column here. Our out-of-control spending is weakening our country. We can no longer afford to kick the can down the road to the next generation. We need to have a serious discussion about our spending priorities before it's too late. Commonsense conservatives have a sincere desire to work with the White House on these challenges, and we’re thankful for those in Congress making the offer to help.

- Sarah Palin

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Charles Krauthammer Echoes Governor Palin

In August 2009 Charles Krauthammer wrote a bizarre article for the Washington Post on the topic of “death-panels” where he asked that Governor Palin “leave the room” arguing that there are no “death panels in the Democratic health care bill”. In the next paragraph of the same article he goes on to explain exactly why the bill does contain said “death panels”. C4P smacked this down here and here.

It seems that Dr Krauthammer has turned around and now agrees with most if not all of Governor Palin’s positions. During her appearance with Greta Van Susteren this past Thursday discussing the State of the Union address, Governor Palin made various statements in describing her views of the speech, three days later Charles Krauthammer echoed the governor on Fox News Sunday:


ON BIPARTISANSHIP:

Greta: So if you were the president, would you call the Speaker and say, you know, Tone it down? Is that something that you would suggest that he do?

PALIN: Absolutely. And if I were the president, I'd say, You know, yes, you're right. We moved too fast. We did not do a bipartisan approach, as I had promised to do. And we're going to back up and we're going to do this right now. But we didn't hear that last night. We didn't hear that again today. So I don't think that it's kind of in their political DNA to even arrive at that point of being able to back up, be gracious about it, be humble about it, be sensible about it, and I'm talking about Reid, Pelosi and President Obama[.]


WALLACE: Do you see a practical, a realistic possibility of compromises with the two parties coming together on some of these great issues and do you sense any political will on either side to do so?

KRAUTHAMMER: No and no [...] I think he [President Obama] has not learnt I think he has not changed he remains an ideologue and I don’t see a pivot [.]


ON HEALTHCARE:

PALIN: The State of the Union address did not help. There was a lot of lecturing, a lot of finger-pointing. And obviously, it wasn't just to the opposition party in, I think, President Obama's mind.
But you know, there was finger-pointing, too, and against the Supreme Court Justices who were there in the audience, and to the American public, with kind of a condescending tone there coming from the White House that made us feel like we're not intelligent enough to have understood what the president was trying to explain about health care, when, in reality, no, we understand that one sixth of our economy being enveloped by government is something that we do not want. We don't want government takeover of our health care system. That's what we have been saying. But the president still disconnected, not getting it.


KRAUTHAMMER: The State of the Union address he explains healthcare in saying, well this is a very complex bill and he didn’t explain it enough. He gave 29 speeches on healthcare, it’s a condescending idea that somehow the electorate - truck driving God clinging electorate – doesn’t understand the complexities and sophistication of this new liberal agenda. It’s not that. It was rejected it wasn’t that it was misunderstood that’s why I think he doesn’t get it.


ON THE JOBS BILL

PALIN: How are jobs going to be created when you talk about cap and tax, which is taxing energy, which will prohibit more developments across our nation, when you talk about the second jobs bill, which is a stimulus bill, more spending, which is going to require tax increases to pay for these things. How in the world is that going to help the middle class? How will that help job creation?


KRAUTHAMMER: Again it was healthcare, it was education, federalising college education and energy, he said he wants a climate bill, after all of this and of course at the centre as you said the first half was what is now, what is a stimulus package he calls it now, its renamed, it’s called a jobs bill he understood that the PR last year wasn’t smart in jobs he had a stimulus last year he’s having another one this year [.]

This is not about going after Dr Krauthammer, he is a smart intellectual man, a staunch conservative and highly respected. But the fact that he lives in the beltway doesn’t necessarily mean he has to act like one. Smart people attract other smart people and it is obvious that the Governor and Dr Krauthammer agree on most issues and express themselves as such. I look forward to welcoming him and other smart and intelligent people back into the room.

Cross-posted at C4P

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Sarah Palin: Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?

Via Facebook

The newly-released mind-boggling, record-smashing $3,400,000,000,000 federal budget invites plenty of opportunity to debate the merits of incurring more and more debt that will drown the next generation of Americans. Never has it been possible to spend your way out of debt. So... let the debate begin.

Included in the debate process will be opportunities for our president to deliberate internally the wisdom of this debt explosion, along with other economic, military and social issues facing our country. Our president will discuss these important issues with Democrat leaders and those within his inner circle. I would ask the president to show decency in this process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm’s continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts. Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm’s recent sick and offensive tactic.

The Obama Administration’s Chief of Staff scolded participants, calling them, “F---ing retarded,” according to several participants, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the “N-word” or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities – and the people who love them – is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.

A patriot in North Andover, Massachusetts, notified me of Rahm’s “retarded” slam. I join this gentleman, who is the father of a beautiful child born with Down Syndrome, in asking why the Special Olympics, National Down Syndrome Society and other groups condemning Rahm’s degrading scolding have been completely ignored by the White House. No comment from his boss, the president?

As my friend in North Andover says, “This isn’t about politics; it’s about decency. I am not speaking as a political figure but as a parent and as an everyday American wanting my child to grow up in a country free from mindless prejudice and discrimination, free from gratuitous insults of people who are ostensibly smart enough to know better... Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Mr. President, you can do better, and our country deserves better.

- Sarah Palin

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