Sarah Palin Joins Michele Bachmann in Proving They're No Historians

Sarah Palin evidently insists Paul Revere's ride was meant also to warn . . . the British!

As reported here, along with supporters' shenanigans at Wikipedia.

For the Michele Bachmann flub, see here.

If we have to have a woman for president, why can't we have one more like Margaret Thatcher? Oxford graduate in chemistry, 1947.

Michele Bachmann Blinked

On the 17th she's quoted here talking all tough about the Obama birth certificate, and then here today she's backed off it big time.

Wacky chick. Not my Tea Party.

Liberty Shmiberty: The Thin Gruel Offered by The Tea Party

"[T]he proper solution would be to get us back to liberty."

-- Rep. Michele Bachmann, self-appointed leader of the Tea Party Republicans in the US House, in New Hampshire today, here

"Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978, here

Patriot Act Votes Show Rep. Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus is Full of TINOs

Tea-Partyers in Name Only.

Everyone's getting this wrong, from Adam Serwer here at The Washington Post to Rush Limbaugh here, on partisan grounds. The Post wants to paint the Tea Party Caucus as a bunch of hypocrites, and Rush wants people to believe the Tea Party actually supports even the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act.

Rush chalked up the Feb. 8 revolt of 26 Republicans to rookies being poorly advised by the Republican leadership:

Now, the Republicans lost 26 of their own members, adding to the 122 Democrats who voted against it," and some of the Republicans say that they 'felt completely uniformed [sic] by their leadership' on this. Some of the rookies, some of the freshmen say they were not really advised about all this in time -- and the leader of the opposition was Dennis Kucinich.  Now, something tells me here that Republicans do not intend to vote with Dennis Kucinich, 'cause he's aligned with the ACLU opposing extending the whole thing, the whole Patriot Act.  So if Kucinich is for it, "all rational people" ought to be against it.  

The only trouble is, the exact same bunch of Republicans all voted against the controversial provisions again yesterday. They've had six days to get brought up to speed by the leadership, but not a single one has changed his vote. And Rep. Hanna joined them to make it 27 and the third from the membership of the more liberal Republican Main Street Partnership.

I guess Rush must think these 27 Republicans are quite irrational after all, voting with Kucinich and the left. Rush was silent about this today, hoping we've forgotten what he said.

The facts are these. The Tea Party in the US House is much smaller than people think, and it isn't co-terminous with Bachmann's caucus. The latter is a bunch of me-too Republicans who find it expedient to identify with the Tea Party politically, just like Michael Steele did, and even Sarah Palin, who took an eternity to speak out against the bailouts. Just 8 self-identified Tea Party Caucus members voted both times against the controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. And only 7 others who joined them were elected in the Tea Party wave last autumn, but they still do not self-identify that way.

When you consider that the vast majority of the Tea Party Caucus voted to extend the Patriot Act provisions, you can understand why 19 Republicans who voted the other way might have a reason not to associate themselves with such pretenders.

Bachmann's list hasn't been updated since last summer, despite the gargantuan Republican sweep in November. Where is all the new blood, huh?

It's staying away for a reason, if it's really there at all.

If Going Rogue Means Going Third Party, Obama's a Shoe-In in 2012

The failure of any other Republican save for Sarah Palin to generate enthusiasm among traditional Republican voters is one of the stupid facts of political life which wise party leadership would know how to exploit. Instead we have Michael Steele.

But Sarah had better not let it go to her head. If "Going Rogue" means she's open to going third party like Ross Perot or George Wallace or Patrick J. Buchanan, she's already finished, and so is the Republican Party, not to mention the cherished hopes of thousands of tea party members everywhere.

Sarah has the ability to unite both partisan and independent elements of the American electorate because her instinctive conservatism is economic, cultural and patriotic all at the same time, much as was Ronald Reagan's. But one important difference between them is that the Gipper spent years and years honing his message and his beliefs. And he could defend them, often eloquently.

Sarah will be successful in part to the extent that she can do the same. Her track record to date is mixed in this regard. She's already proven that she can hold her own with a glib old pol like Joe Biden, but the Katie Couric episode was a disaster. External events, however, can make a difference. And if the last twelve months are any indication, the country will be ready for a plain spoken, straight shooting family woman after four years of lies, damned lies, and (negative) statistics. As long as she's a Republican.

Patrik Jonsson writes "Sarah Palin will headline first-ever Tea Party Convention" at The Christian Science Monitor:

Almost 1-1/2 years since she shook up American politics with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is set to headline another landmark political event: the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn.

On its face, the gig would seem a step down for Ms. Palin, one of conservative America’s most popular and polarizing figures (not to mention major thorn in the side of the Obama White House).

But with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranking a generic “Tea Party” as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans, and Palin herself rivaling the charming Mr. Obama in poll popularity, many experts see the Tea Party event as a potential milestone for a mounting, even transformational, force in US politics. ...

[T]he Nashville event is not about chartering a new political party to represent conservative ideals like low taxes and states’ rights, but more about unifying to take on “Obama, Pelosi and Reid this year,” writes Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, one of many Tea Party groups and the lead sponsor of a convention that will feature conservative firebrands such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota.

Already, tea-colored races are appearing around the country, including the looming matchup between Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (seen as Republican Lite by many conservatives) and Cuban-American conservative Marco Rubio, who has gotten the stamp of approval by Tea Party folks.

To read the rest of the story, go here.