A new book by two reporters who traveled with Sarah Palin during the 2008 election has some revealing tidbits. Sarah from Alaska, by Scott Conroy and Sushannah Walshe, tells the story of how Palin insisted she was going to give a concession speech on election night, but never told any of her staff that the McCain people nixed the idea, causing great confusion. In spite of being told otherwise, she insisted to her staff, “I’m speaking. I’ve go the remarks Figure it out.” Palin finally had to be told by senior McCain adviser Mark Salter that the vice presidential nominee doing so was unprecedented.
Among other items:
– In the days after her selection as the vice presidential nominee, the McCain team was so unsure of Palin’s policy acumen that they drew up hundreds of flash cards to get the candidate “up to speed on foreign affairs and major national issues.” One of the flash cards noted that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was Gordon Brown, the book says.
– Before her now famous speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Palin’s handlers began to rip the price tags off items in the candidate’s lavish new wardrobe, paid for by the Republican National Commitee, after Palin expressed concerns about the cost of the clothing. According to the book, a $90 pair of socks was purchased for Palin’s low-maintenance father, Chuck Heath.
– During a celebration among staffers after the vice presidential debate in St. Louis, Palin began pushing hard to start bringing up the topic of Barack Obama’s controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright on the campaign trail. She wanted badly to win the election, the authors note. “I just don’t want to go back to Alaska,” Palin said off-handedly during the gathering.
Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson told the right-wing CNS News that the Obama administration is “solely responsible” for the vaccine shortage.
“The current administration is solely responsible. They can’t blame this on any prior administration,” said Wilson. “This is the responsibility of the current administration. They’ve put the lives of Americans at risk.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shows that it was Wilson and other Republicans cast votes that got us to this point.
The DCCC pointed to a June vote on a supplementary appropriations bill as evidence. Wilson joined 95% of Republicans and voted against the bill, which contained special funding to combat H1N1 both domestically and internationally. But the bill also contained other much more money for other plans and programs Republicans at the time viewed as wasteful, including the Cash-For-Clunkers car purchase incentive program.
Still, the DCCC says that a vote against the bill essentially equaled a vote against combating H1N1 and means Republicans who voted against it like Wilson favored a public health program that would have resulted in even less vaccine than is available now.
As General Stanley McChrystal’s advice about how many, if any, more Americans will be sent into harms way is being considered, author Jon Krakauer is promoting his book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. The Army created a myth around Tillman’s death, says Krakauer, as everyone involved knew within 24 hours it was the result of friendly fire. And Krakauer told David Gregory that the idea of McChrystal not knowing this is “preposterous”.
Krakauer: McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star
[...]
He, he just said now he didn’t read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn’t read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That’s preposterous. That, that’s not believable.
Think Progress has kept tabs on the hyperbolic statements of Republican North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, and so have we. For example, in 2008, Foxx attacked Democrats who voted against drilling in ANWR, saying:
“We had a great opportunity to pass a bill yesterday that would have created more American energy, but my colleagues on the other side don’t seem to be in favor of more American energy. They seem to be anti-American energy, just as many other things that they support seem to be anti-American power and anti-American control.”
Now, Foxx may have topped herself, railing on about how people fear for our freedoms:
Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.
Glenn Greenwald points out that even though Connecticut voters favor a public option 68-21 percent, Senator Joe Lieberman may have other reasons to oppose a public option. He receives huge donations from the health care industry and his wife, Hadassah, was hired in 2005 by PR and lobbying firm Hill and Knowlton as a “senior counselor” in their health and pharmaceuticals practice. Meanwhile, another conservative Democrat, Evan Bayh, also threatens to filibuster the vote. Bayh’s wife, Susan, is on the board of directors of health insurer Wellpoint, and the Bayhs own between half-a-million and a million dollars in Wellpoint stock. Bayh also receives big campaign dollars from the health care industry.
Republican Dede Scozzafava, who dropped out of the NY-23 congressional race because all the national money was going to her conservative opponent Doug Hoffman, has endorsed Democrat Bill Owens for the seat vacated by John McHugh.
“I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same,” she said. “In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first.”
They called her a “radical leftist” when she was in the race against Owens. I can only imagine what they’ll call her now.
It may be labor-intensive to keep track of every nutball who posts something to the Republican National Committee’s Facebook page, but one would think they wouldn’t want this imagery hanging around for a week. That’s how long it took them to remove a series of photos that don’t reflect well on them.
Among them was a picture of President Barack Obama eating fried chicken, subtitled with a call to prohibit interracial marriage. The photo’s caption read: “Miscegenation is a CRIME against American Values. Repeal Loving v. Virginia.”
His direct mail campaigns helped empower and elect many Republicans, including Ronald Reagan. He believes George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are too liberal. Richard Viguerie now can celebrate.
With the decision of moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the party’s nominee in New York state special election for an open congressional seat, to suspend her campaign, the new “new right” — which Viguerie describes as “Tea Party activists, town hall protesters, and conservatives across the country” — can claim a clear victory in its struggle to define the GOP as a far more extreme party than that envisoned by Bush, Cheney or Gingrich.
Frank Rich says that although it’s still conceivable that Democrat Bill Owens can win in NY-23, it’s even better for Democrats if conservative Doug Hoffman wins.
Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure. That’s bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor’s race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.
The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year.
The ideological purity demanded by the far right is a throwback to the days of the John Birchers whose tactics were much like the communists they decried.
Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.
So, let the winner be the candidate who will best drive more from the left into public office.
A new book by two reporters who traveled with Sarah Palin during the 2008 election has some revealing tidbits. Sarah from Alaska, by Scott Conroy and Sushannah Walshe, tells the story of how Palin insisted she was going to give a concession speech on election night, but never told any of her staff that the McCain people nixed the idea, causing great confusion. In spite of being told otherwise, she insisted to her staff, “I’m speaking. I’ve go the remarks Figure it out.” Palin finally had to be told by senior McCain adviser Mark Salter that the vice presidential nominee doing so was unprecedented.
Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson told the right-wing 
His direct mail campaigns helped empower and elect many Republicans, including Ronald Reagan. He believes George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are too liberal. Richard Viguerie 
