by Whitney Pitcher
On April 18th, Governor Palin gave a rousing speech in Madison Wisconsin in the midst of one of the fiercest state budget battles in recent history. In that speech, Governor Palin noted the importance of this battle and recognized the courage and tenacity of Wisconsin conservatives in supporting their legislature and governor in their efforts to restore fiscal sanity and ensure that the pressures of union bosses did not mean that teachers’ union members would lose their jobs. She noted (emphasis added):
Hello, Madison, Wisconsin! You look good. I feel like I’m at home. This is beautiful. Madison, I am proud to get to be with you today. Madison, these are the frontlines in the battle for the future of our country. This is where the line has been drawn in the sand. And I am proud to stand with you today in solidarity.Governor Palin’s prescience shone through once again in recognizing the importance of the political battle in Wisconsin as the “frontlines in the battle for the future of our country”. Earlier this week, recall elections were held for six Wisconsin state senate seats that the unions hoped would flip to break up the Republican’s legislative majority. Despite the fact that recall supporting groups spent at least $30 million for these elections, the Republicans still maintained their majority. These victories come on the heels of other victories for Wisconsin: the re-election of Justice Prosser, a WI supreme court judge (whom Governor Palin endorsed) and the budgetary victory passed by the WI legislature signed into law by Governor Walker, which Governor Palin spoke of in her speech. These recent political victories may prove to be a precursor to the 2012 elections.
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Well, I am in Madison today because this is where real courage and real integrity can be found. Courage is your governor and your legislators standing strong in the face of death threats and thug tactics. Courage is you all standing strong with them! You saw the forces aligned against fiscal reform. You saw the obstruction and the destruction. You saw these violent rent-a-mobs trash your capital and vandalize businesses.
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And Madison, you defended the 2010 electoral mandate. You are heroes, you are patriots, and when the history of this Tea Party Movement is written, what you accomplished here will not be forgotten.
Your historic stand brought down the curtain on the last election. And the 2012 election begins here.[…]
It starts here! It starts now! What better place than the state that hosts the Super Bowl champs to call out the liberal left and let them know: Mr. President, game on!
Governor Palin’s speech in a fierce physical and political climate during a heated period of politics is just one example of Governor Palin’s participation in the battle for the future of our country. In the Spring of 2010 during the impassioned debate over Arizona’s immigration law, Governor Palin stood with Governor Jan Brewer in support of her effort to secure Arizona’s southern border. When the Tea Party was accused of essentially being an accomplice to murder after the horrific action of a madman in Tucson, Arizona, Governor Palin stood side-by-side with the Tea Party while others felt they “didn’t want to get in the middle of [it]”.Several days following the Tucson shooting, Governor Palin released a video where she said, in part:
President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.Most recently during the debt ceiling debates, after some felt it necessary to pejoratively refer to the Tea Party as “hobbits”, Governor Palin challenged Congressional freshman to “remember the ‘little people’” who elected them. She has stood for and fought with the Tea Party every step of the way.
In short, Governor Palin has been on the front lines of the battle for the future of our country. She has been the leader of the Tea Party, not because she deemed herself the leader, but simply because she has acted as the leader. Whether it was standing with conservatives in Wisconsin or Arizona, supporting Tea Party candidates in the 2010 elections, giving speeches at Tea Parties around the country, or defending the Tea Party against scurrilous accusations and derogatory rhetoric, Governor Palin has been the one leading the fight and battling in the trenches.
Flash back to another time when people felt they were misrepresented and overtaxed and when they felt their God given freedoms were threatened. Who was fighting with them? George Washington. Our current fight may solely be a battle of ideology, principles, and integrity where victories are counted by elections and legislation, not where victories and losses are counted by cities captured or soldiers dead. However, the comparison still rings true. George Washington fought with the Continental Army. A few years later, following the drafting and ratification of a constitution, George Washington was elected as America’s first president.
While it was largely an understood formality that the electors would choose Washington, why was he chosen over some of the others? Why was not Patrick Henry, James Madison, or Thomas Jefferson chosen as the first president of the United States? When it was all said and done, it was George Washington, not these men, who fought for and with the people those electors were representing. As we face the upcoming 2012 election, we have politicians who are analogous to the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry, who are great writers, thinkers or orators, but there’s only one who has fought with and for the American people—Governor Sarah Palin.
A Time For Choosing
