BREAKING NEWS! Seriously, it's time to Cue The Conservative Outrage, because this one is BIG! Last night, the former half-term governor of Alaska used "chains" as a political metaphor to attack President Obama and Vice President Biden.
It's doable, it's winnable, Missouri is. And that leads to winning the Senate. And that leads to reversing a lot of the things that Obama and Biden have done to put our children and grandchildren in the chains of dependency.
You read that right. Sarah Palin said President Obama and Vice President Biden were putting children into "chains." Not only that, she said it on Fox. And since I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people who watch Fox are white, Sarah Palin basically just accused this administration of enslaving the entire white race. Outrage!
If you're a Republican, the good news is that Mitt Romney has already gotten out in front of this story. In fact, he did it last week when he flipped his mind after Joe Biden used the exact same metaphor.
Mitt Romney leveled his harshest criticism of President Obama's reelection campaign to date in Ohio Tuesday, declaring that Obama should "take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago." [...]
Referring to Joe Biden's comment that Romney and Republicans would let big business put Americans "back in chains" Romney said Obama's "campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the presidency. Another outrageous charge just came a few hours ago in Virginia."
"This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like," Romney said.
According to Romney, Biden's comments proved that Obama was running a racist campaign. "The divisiveness based upon income, age, ethnicity, and so forth, it's designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealousy and anger,"
he said.
Given that Mitt Romney prides himself as nothing if not a totally fair and reasonable guy, it's safe to assume that with those remarks he was retroactively accusing Palin of being every bit as racist as Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I mean, Mitt would never do anything that was hypocritical, right? The retroactive nature of the condemnation is just a bonus.
And the good news for Mitt is that he wasn't alone. Sarah Palin herself said that her future rhetorical stylings were "disgusting."
Sarah Palin said Tuesday that Vice President Joe Biden’s remark that Republicans “are going to put y’all back in chains” was “disgusting” — and added that it should make the Obama campaign seriously consider kicking him off the Democratic ticket.
The former GOP vice presidential candidate told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren that Biden’s comment at a Tuesday rally in Danville, Va., should mark “the nail in the coffin” for the vice president.
Nail in the coffin indeed. And I'll give her some credit for forward-thinking: It's been more than three years since she quit her job as governor of Alaska, because anyone who might one day use the word "chains" in a political metaphor surely is unfit to hold public office.