It's a heady return to the old all-Palin, all-the-time days of early September here at TAPPED, and I for one won't be left out. ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala notes that Palin has been getting way out front of, well, everyone, in going after Obama's utterly anodyne radio interview from 2001. You'd like a taste?
"There he was talking about the need for quote 'redistributive change,'" Palin said on the campus of Shippensburg University Tuesday night. “Sen. Obama said that he regretted that the Supreme Court hadn't been more radical. And he described the Court's refusal to take up the issues of redistribution of wealth as a tragedy. And he said he also regretted that the Supreme Court didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers there in the Constitution”
Obama had in fact argued the opposite in the 2001 interview, saying that the civil rights movement had become too focused on making change through the judicial system, rather than from the ground up through community organizations.
... But Palin then went beyond any argument McCain has made, using the 2001 interview to insinuate that Obama wants to re-write the U.S. Constitution and appoint radical Supreme Court justices, while also suggesting that under Obama, judges would confiscate the property of American citizens.
... The comments were similar to remarks Palin made at rallies this weekend in Iowa, where the Republican vice presidential nominee seemed to move from accusing Obama's economic plans of having elements of socialism to also allude to the problems faced by communist systems.
Palin is really a McCarthyite figure, isn't she? Let me run you through the steps: Take an economic plan based on the long-standing principles of American regulated capitalism. Call it socialism because it includes market interventions, even though your economic plan includes market intervention as well. Then, well, there's no step here, Palin just starts calling it communism and scaring people with talk of state confiscation of property. One more disjointed leap and you're in Jonah Goldberg territory. I'm tempted to say that Palin is a malicious liar, but judging by some of the reporting coming from her campaign -- "Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues" -- that she's just saying whatever comes into her head.
--Tim Fernholz
