December 21, 2013

Sarah Palin’s Advice on Syria: ‘Let Allah Sort it Out’

http://kysdc.com/3107803/sarah-palins-advice-on-syria-let-allah-sort-it-out/?omcamp=scribol&utm_source=hexagram.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=hexagram.com

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seems to have an endless supply of inappropriate and ignorant comments when it comes to politics, and her latest comments do not disappoint.

While speaking at the annual meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Saturday, Palin criticized President Obama and his decision to intervene with the fighting in Syria.

“We’re talking now more, new interventions, I say until we know what we’re doing, until we have a commander in chief who knows what he’s doing … well, in these radical Islamic countries aren’t even respecting basic human rights, when both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line, Allahu Akbar, I say until we have someone who knows what they’re doing, I say: Let Allah sort it out.”

This past Thursday President Obama agreed to supply military support to Syrian rebels after intelligence agencies confirmed the Syrian military had used chemical weapons on its people. The use of weapons like the nerve agent sarin crossed the ‘red line’ necessary to trigger American involvement, said the president.


From July, but this is the first I've heard of it.

December 13, 2013

John Boehner is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/12/12/john-boehner-is-mad-as-hell-and-hes-not-going-to-take-it-anymore/?tid=pm_politics_pop

John Boehner is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore

By Chris Cillizza
December 12 at 1:36 pm

A remarkable thing happened Thursday morning in Washington. House Speaker John Boehner told tea party conservative groups exactly what he thought of them.
John Boehner channeled Howard Beale in "Network" today.

John Boehner channeled Howard Beale in “Network” today.

“Frankly I just think they’ve lost all credibility,” Boehner said of groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, who have come out in opposition to the budget compromise deal expected to be voted on later Thursday in the House. “I don’t care what they do.”

Boehner’s rebuke of these outside groups is the culmination of several years of legislative setbacks orchestrated by a tea party wing that views any form of compromise as capitulation. From the thwarted “Plan B” during the fiscal cliff debate to the farm bill to relief funds for Hurricane Sandy victims to the government shutdown, Boehner has watched with increasing frustration this year as groups like Heritage, the Club and Senate Conservatives Fund have driven an immoveable wedge within the House Republican conference.

Boehner’s outburst was his second in as many days — on Wednesday he accused these groups of ”using our members and…..the American people for their own goals” — and is simply the latest sign that the GOP establishment has had just about enough of tea party conservatives. In late November, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who faces a primary challenge from his ideological right in 2014, said that “the Senate Conservatives Fund is giving conservatism a bad name,” adding: “They’re participating in ruining the brand.” And, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the author of the latest budget compromise and the party’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, lashed out at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio Thursday morning for opposing the deal; “Read the deal and get back to me,” Ryan told Rubio during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”.

What explains the Republican establishment’s newfound bravery when it comes to tangling with the tea party? Two big things:

1) The tea party is at historic lows in terms of public opinion. In new Gallup polling, just 30 percent of people view the movement favorably; even one in three self-identified conservatives say the dislike the tea party. Condemning unpopular things is, you guessed it, popular.

2) There’s safety in numbers. McConnell threw the first stone. But now that other prominent figures within the party are coming forward to say, essentially, enough is enough, it’s now become less politically risky to add your voice to that chorus.

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Chris Cillizza is founder and editor of The Fix, a leading blog on state and national politics. He is the author of The Gospel According to the Fix: An Insider’s Guide to a Less than Holy World of Politics and an MSNBC contributor and political analyst. He also regularly appears on NBC and NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show. He joined The Post in 2005 and was named one of the top 50 journalists by Washingtonian in 2009.