Republicans left Washington having stared the White House down and gotten $38 billion in spending cuts for FY2011. They’d broken down the White House’s will for a “clean” debt ceiling increase and gotten it closer to accepting concessions.
For their troubles, they get… Sarah Palin ripping into then.
What’s fascinating to me – okay, not surprising, but fascinating – is how Palin buys a take on the budget deal that only the most reality-challenged members of the House now belive.
“We find out it’s not $38 billion,” she says, “it’s less than $1 billion in real cuts. $352 million in real cuts? That’s more than the government is going to spend while we’re at this rally today. That’s not courage, that’s capitulation.”
Well, no. There are some flimsy cuts in the budget, but Palin’s confusing outlays and spending. This is an odd mistake for a former mayor and governor to make, so maybe it isn’t a mistake, and from outside the party she’s trying to push them to the right.
The speech is punchier but less compelling than the one Donald Trump gave at a south Florida Tea Party rally. Trump’s stump style reminds me of nothing less than Bluto Blutarksy’s rally-the-troops speech from “Animal House.”
This is a particularly smooth observation on Libya: “I hear the rebels are from Iran. I hear they’re al Qaeda.”
