Sarah Palin had a Facebook meltdown last night because President Obama dared to use her own words in context in a campaign ad. Naturally, in writing her defense, she doubled down on the things said in the ad while claiming they were taken out of context.
The President’s ads are writing themselves this election season because as we all know, the truth is stranger than fiction for the modern day Republican Party. All the Obama team has to do is roll the tape of any number of Republicans speaking and boom! Lights out for all but the most racist and uninformed.
Here’s an Obama ad featuring Palin on Fox News’ Hannity essentially saying Barack Obama will bring back racial discrimination against white people:
Obama ad transcript via TPM:
Barack Obama I think has never been seen in the conventional, traditional way of we who would describe a man of valor. … And his profession as a community organizer — what went into his thinking was this philosophy of radicalism … he is bringing us back, Sean, to days that — you can hearken back to days before the Civil War … What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin. Why are we allowing our country to move backwards?
Sarah Palin did say these things, in fact, we wrote about it here in Sarah Palin Unveils 2012 Strategy: Insane Racism Redux. Palin did accuse the President of trying to take America back to pre “Civil War” times. President Obama can hardly help it if Palin is ignorant.
But Sarah Palin is steaming mad that Obama is using her words to hang the Republican Party. And where can a coward like Palin go when she’s angry but to her Facebook bunker? She’s too frightened to go on any mainstream media outlets, especially with Game Change on fire this week. So Palin takes to Facebook and doubles down on the exact same rhetoric she claims was taken out of context.
Here is what she wrote in part on her Facebook Page:
Exhibit A in these diversionary tactics is an absurd new attack ad President Obama has released taking my comments out of context….
This latest ad is quite odd, but also quite telling. It shows that our President sure seems fearful of discussing the economy, energy prices, and all the other problems people need addressed. And intended or not, now that his ad opens up the discussion of Barack Obama’s radical past associations and the radical philosophy that shaped his ideas about his promised “fundamental transformation” of our country, I welcome the media to join ordinary Americans in finally vetting Barack Obama. The media failed to do so in 2008 to the detriment of us all. Maybe this time around they can do their job.
They might start by noting the President’s heavily edited attack ad.”
Here is her original interview:
Transcript (edited from original courtesy of Crooks and Liars):
PALIN: Well, what we can gleam from this is an understanding of why we are all on the road that we are on and it’s based on what went into his thinking, being surrounded by radicals…He is bringing us back Sean to days that… you can harken back to days before the Civil War, when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal. And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth here in America… Yes, we are equal and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin. You have equal opportunities to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities… What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin…Why are we allowing our country to move backwards instead of moving forward with that understanding that as our charters of liberty spell out for us, we are all created equally.
What we have here, America, is a failure to communicate. The implication in “heavily edited” and “taken out of context” is that the person said something before or after the quote that changes the entire meaning of the sound bite. That is not what happened to Sarah Palin. These are her words, and the entire interview does nothing to change what she meant.
This is the opposite of what Breitbart did to Shirley Sherrod, who was telling a story about a lesson she learned and how she had been wrong, and Breitbart left that part out of the quote. That was an example of willfully misleading people about the speaker’s intentions and meaning. This is not. In fact, in her own rebuttal, Palin doubles down on her accusations that the President is a radical who wants to fundamentally transform America. Are we supposed to forget her infamous cry, “This is a man who does not see America as you and I see it… This is a man who pals around with terrorists.”
It is not Barack Obama who was not vetted, as Game Change so scathingly reveals. It was Sarah Palin who was not vetted. It was Sarah Palin who did not know what the Fed was. It was Sarah Palin who could not handle an interview with McCain friendly Katie Couric. It was Sarah Palin who was associated with a radical, dangerous secessionist party. Yes, America, Sarah Palin has a projection problem and she desperately wants us all to focus on Barack Obama’s “radical past” and gas prices right now, as does the entire Republican Party.
Gas prices and invented narratives based on “otherism” of Barack Obama are all the Right has, and Sarah Palin probably really believes that the President has full control over gas prices. This is the woman who didn’t know the difference between North and South Korea and thought that one of our “border allies” was Iraq. Heck, Palin is allegedly an energy expert, but she believes that we can bring down oil prices by drilling here. That’s just sad.
But what’s worse is that the Republican base and many Americans are buying this load of baloney. They need only look to the amount of drilling we’ve done here under Obama versus the amount of drilling done in Germany and the price of gas in both countries to see that oil prices are set on the global market.
But they don’t want to talk about reality, because reality is an ugly mess for the Republican Party. Instead, they want to gin up fear about Obama taking us back to pre-Civil War era, because we all know that all African Americans preferred that time to the heady days of today where everyone is “equal”. Everyone, that is, except for a half black man who is President of this country; he, of course, is subjected to endless racism and fear tactics based on the color of his skin and his “Muslim religion.” As if it matters what religion he is, but for the record, since it’s clear the Republicans in Mississippi and Alabama need some help with this: BARACK OBAMA IS A CHRISTIAN. Now, please do the country a favor and hush up about his religion. Go read up on how gas prices are set.
Sarah Palin is freaking out because she doesn’t like her words being used as she said them. She claims they were edited out of context and to some degree she is correct. The Obama campaign did her a favor and left out some of the more inflammatory rhetoric from that very interview. Gosh, for that matter, they could have used her Blood Libel video; the one where she blamed the “depraved liberals” for the atmosphere of hate and denied any responsibility for putting cross hairs on Gabby Gifford’s district and then whined about how she was being treated on the very day of the memorial for the victims of the Arizona massacre.
I told you Sarah Palin would be useful one day. She encapsulates in one person everything that should frighten the average American about the modern day Republican Party. She lacks the courage to stand behind her own words and the fortitude to face her mistakes. She lacks character and judgment. She lies easily. She feels persecuted and wallows in victimhood when she should be acting like a leader.
The truth is that many Americans are tired of Sarah Palin style rhetoric from the GOP. They’re fed up with the division and hatred. The Obama campaign knows it and they’re going to use it. The Obamas have been putting up with obscene threats and hatred directed at them daily since 2008, courtesy of Sarah Palin and the Right. I’m sure if they had their druthers, none of this would have happened and they wouldn’t have to roll this ugly footage in order to explain the origin of the fear-mongering. Whose fault is it that Sarah Palin said these things that made it so easy for the Obama campaign to capture the Republican Party in one short ad?
That’s right. It’s Sarah Palin’s fault. Cue the whining and the link to that esteemed bastion of trustworthy video editing, Breitbart.com. Don’t let the narrative escape you; this is about turning this election into the only two issues that the Republicans think they can win on: racism and gas prices. Oh, and for Sarah, it’s all about Sarah. Nothing new there.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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