After acknowledging her admiration of Dick Cheney's style this week, Sarah Palin decided that imitation would be the best form of flattery. So in true Cheneyesque fashion, Sarah played the terrorist card today, claiming Obama is "palling around with terrorists."
We know that the McCain campaign is desperate, and is flailing around in an effort to come up with a winning strategy (or is that a tactic?). But this newest effort, as part of their now widely reported plan to go sharply negative, will fall as flat now as it did months ago.
As reported in today's Huffington Post, in an article from Englewood Colorado. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
"Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his association with a former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign's effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters."
Palin's reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the tumultuous Vietnam War era four decades ago. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, served on a charity board with Ayers several years ago and has denounced his radical views and activities.
As also reported, Obama left the board on which he served with Ayers in 2002. But Palin's use of the present tense to describe Obama's connection with Ayers should not be surprising, given Palin's limited vocabulary, her challenges in speaking standard American English, and of course, her lack of ethical standards. The article notes:
Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."
So how does Palin see America? And do we see it the same way she does, as she seems to believe?
Well, if her conduct in Alaska is in any way reflective of her view of America, then she sees America as a place in which she can enrich herself at the expense of others. (As an example, in her tax returns made public yesterday, Sarah apparently forgot to claim the $60,000 in travel expenses she enjoyed with her family. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... ) And if her conduct on the campaign trail is evidence of her beliefs, she sees Americans as people who can be easily duped.
But what is truly ironic here is that as Palin speaks of Obama as being un-American, she is in the process of an emergency appeal of a ruling which denied her the ability to stop the investigation into Troopergate. So she is attempting to prevent disclosure of her misdeeds in Alaska. http://www.adn.com/... The lawyers for Palin have the nerve to claim that "(T)he plaintiffs and Alaskans will suffer irreparable harm if the investigation at issue continues and if the resulting investigative report issues as planned on Oct. 10, 2008..."
The obligation of the government to investigate whether she abused the power of her office, the newspapers to report on this issue, and the public (both personally and at the polls) to judge her on it, are concepts consistent with some of the most basic American values upon which this country was founded.
So when Palin says "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and I see America," we can all rest assured that most of us are in agreement about that. Because this is not a woman who sees America as you see America and I see America.