I’m a little surprised that ThinkProgress’ pull from Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Express speech this weekend has gotten so much attention. Well, not completely surprised — it’s a quote from Sarah Palin. But is this supposed to embarrass her?
In these volatile times when we are a nation at war, now more than ever is when we need a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor lecturing us from a lectern.
That’s basically a sauced-up version of this line from her speech at the National Tea Party Convention:
Treating this as a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risks because that is not how radical Islamic extremists look at this. They know we are at war. To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.
The ThinkProgress take is that this is hypocritical because the “Tea Party movement loves to express its affection for the Constitution.” Well, yes. They love the Constitution. But “Constitutional law professor” does not, for Tea Partiers, sound like someone who loves the Constitution. It sounds like a liberal elitist who dreams up ways to work around it. Maybe this is the start of some liberal pushback against that narrative, but it’s a Palin dog whistle, not a Palin gaffe.