Palin Calls GOP Battles Healthy; Hits "Dithering" Obama
Former Gov. Sarah Palin said that Republicans should not hesitate "duking it out" with each other in primaries, and downplayed the need for a third party movement to espouse conservative principles.
Speaking on Rush Limbaugh's radio show today about the results of the New York 23 election, Palin called Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman's apparent defeat evidence that, "If you're not the anointed one within the machine, sometimes you have a much tougher road to hoe." Limbaugh then asked about whether the former GOP VP nominee thought a third party would be viable.
"Ideally, sure, a third party or an independent party would be able to soar and thrive and put candidates forth and have them elected. But I don't think America is ready for that," she said. Palin said she didn't consider herself an "obsessive partisan," and also referred to her husband as being someone who was a registered independent but has "got more common sense conservatism than a whole lot of Republicans that I know."
"But to answer your question, I don't think the third party movement will be what's necessary to usher in some common sense conservative ideals," she repeated.
Palin added that independents would continue to move toward the Republican Party, as they did this November in New Jersey and Virginia, if Republicans focus on "just implementing common-sense, conservative solutions." And she said that she appreciates that her party hasn't shied from having "contested, aggressive, competitive primaries."
"We're not like this herd mentality, like a bunch of sheep, with the fighting instincts of sheep ... like some of the Democrat Party, where heaven forbid you take a stand and you oppose somebody within your own party because it's the right thing to do," she said. "Some in the other side, they're observing what goes on in the GOP and say, 'That's infighting and they can't get along and there's no consensus there.' No! This is healthy debate. Good competition that makes candidates work harder. It makes for a better product, if you will, at the end of the day. I appreciate that about our party."
Anyone who watched the 2008 presidential primaries might disagree that Democrats have a "herd mentality." But her comments nonetheless represent her first extended views on domestic and international politics beyond occasional Facebook notes, and come as she gets ready to kick off a multi-state book tour.
Palin was particularly eager to weigh in on national security, criticizing President Obama, though not by name, for "dithering and hesitation" on Afghanistan.
"We're gonna claim what Ronald Reagan claimed. Our motto's gonna be, we win, you lose," she siad. "The way that we do that is allow McChrystal to have the reinforcements that he's asking for in Afghanistan that sends the message to the terrorists over there that, now we're going to end this thing with our victory."
After the jump, Palin's views on health care, Iran and other issues.
On Iran:
We need to start facing Iran with tougher and tougher sanctions that need to be considered. ... We need to look at halting Iran's imports of refined petroleum products. They're quite reliant on imported gasoline. We need to use that hammer to wake up the leadership there too. Those are two big challenges that we have right now.
On Health Care:
There are so many questions unanswered. I don't like the idea in general of the federal government thinking it needs to take over health care, which essentially this is, and control one-sixth of our economy. Not when there are common sense solutions to meeting our health care challenges in our country, like alloying the intra- and interstate competition with insurers, tort reform, cutting down on the waste and fraud that the Obama administration insists if we did that would just pay for this ...
On green energy:
"I think there's a lot of snake-oil science involved in that, and somebody's making a whole lot of money off people's fears."
On climate change:
"I don't attribute all the changes to man's activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical, and the earth does cool and it warms. Our greatest challenge with energy is that we're not tapping into the abundant domestic supplies that God created right under foot."
On VP Biden saying it's more complicated than "Drill Baby Drill"
"What is complicated about tapping into abundant, safe, domestic supplies that could provide stability for our country and security for our country?"