Ronald Reagan won two presidential elections by fighting for the “Forgotten Man,” and Sarah Palin said Republicans will only win presidential elections in the future if the party sticks up for the “little guy” and the “Forgotten Man” of all races and backgrounds.
Building upon the themes she has always fought for and distilled in a landmark speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 in which she denounced the bipartisan permanent political class and their brand of crony capitalism that extracts wealth from American workers, Palin told attendees at the Western Conservative Summit in Colorado on Saturday to think about what Sam Griffith posted on her Facebook page. She said he wrote: “I grew up poor. My mother was a die-hard FDR Democrat. When I turned eighteen the first president I voted for was Ronald Reagan. My mother was beside herself. When she asked me why I had voted for him, I told her I didn’t plan on staying poor.”
“This is our message. This is what we stand for,” Palin exclaimed. “You wanna win big in these midterms, you wanna win big in 2016? Listen to Sam. Stand for a guy who still wants to believe in the American dream.”
Palin said the “Forgotten Man” is not invited to parties in swanky zip codes and Washington D.C. where crony deals are cut. She said the Forgotten Man “is the hard-working middle class that just can’t seem to get a break” and who is worried about their mortgage and the cost of college. She said the Forgotten Man “is the college grad who voted for Hope and Change, but now can’t find a job. Losing hope. Got no change.”
She said the Forgotten Man is the soldier we sent off to war who has come “home forever scarred” and denied his “promised compensation” while he is shuffled around the Veterans Administration while VA bureaucrats “give themselves raises.”
“Today, the Forgotten Man is the patriot,” Palin said. “She starts a Tea Party group to champion the blessings of liberty and prosperity… but finds herself the target of the IRS.” And Palin said when the “crystal-clear evidence stares” Obama in the face about the IRS’s corruption, Obama slaps the Forgotten Man in the face and says, “no corruption at all.” Not even a smidgen.
“Sadly, the forgotten man has used to being lied to,” Palin said. She singled out Benghazi, where Palin said “our ambassador there begged for security and was ignored and murdered when the consulate was attacked by savage Muslim terrorists.” She said Obama promptly lied to Americans and blamed a YouTube video for “this highly organized, premeditated attack.”
Speaking at the same Colorado university in which she gave a Reaganesque foreign policy speech three years that found the sweet spot between retreating into isolationism and recklessly and naively trying to be the world’s policeman, Palin said the “Forgotten Man is used to Obama’s lawlessness” — and she cited “amnesty” as the chief example.
Palin noted that Obama has turned America into an “unfunded charity” that illegal immigrants can invade and overrun after unilaterally passing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Palin also wondered why illegal immigrant children were being dumped in working-class and middle-class communities in not in swanky zip codes in Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley, and Manhattan, places where pro-amnesty advocates are pressuring Obama to not deport the nearly 60,000 illegal immigrant children who have unlawfully entered the country since October of last year.
Palin also blasted wealthy amnesty supporters who would rather replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers, denying the “Forgotten Man” an opportunity to “earn a decent living and the dignity that comes with that.”
Palin said a decent living allows the Forgotten Man to get ahead and perhaps lay a foundation for their children to “finish what you started.” She said that exceptionalism is lost when people don’t play by the rules and those at the top promote lawlessness regarding illegal immigration and “collude” to “drive down wages of Americans by replacing them.”
She said that the Forgotten Man believes “in this exception nation” and will fight anyone who wants to fundamentally transform America by undermining its rule of law and “making it just another chunk of land on a map no different from the countries our ancestors left to stake a claim here — legally.”
“But who’s looking out for the American worker? Who has got their backs? Who fights for them? Who will stand up for the forgotten man?” Palin asked. “One man did. He was an FDR Democrat. And he left his party because he said his party left him.”
Palin said that man was Ronald Reagan, who said, “You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy, and still be for the little guy.”
Palin said Reagan “stood for us,” and that’s why American workers stood with him.
Saying that Republicans represent the calloused hands of people who built the country and the little guy who can’t afford seats at swanky fundraisers but also does not begrudge success and loathes crony capitalism, Palin reminded attendees that the Forgotten Man wants freedom and the culture of life and the military to be respected. Palin also said “defending our borders and defending our constitution and rule of law” are important to the forgotten man.
Palin has been one of the few politicians in either party who has never forgotten the “Forgotten Man,” and that is why both establishments have often derided and reviled her. But Politicians on both sides of the aisle are tapping into the anti-crony capitalism spirit that continues to percolate. Even the mainstream media is finally recognizing it. Palin was ahead of the curve, though. Before there was Dave Brat and Elizabeth Warren, Palin delivered a landmark speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 where she injected crony capitalism on both sides of the aisle in “Boomtown” into the political bloodstream to make it an issue. Before she blasted the bipartisan “permanent political class” in her Indianola speech, Palin took them on in Alaska. She won and enacted significant reforms, accomplishing nearly every one of her campaign promises.
Palin also said impeachment should be used as the ultimate check against a lawless executive, and she again indicated that Obama’s lawlessness on illegal immigration was the tipping point for her to call for impeachment because no issue adversely impacts the “Forgotten Man” of all backgrounds and races more. That is why Palin announced in an op-ed on Breitbart.com that Obama’s “many impeachable offenses” can no longer be ignored.
“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment,” Palin wrote.
As Breitbart News noted, “Palin specifically said Obama’s lawlessness on illegal immigration was the tipping point because it impacted Americans — native-born and legal immigrants — of all backgrounds”:
The federal government is trillions of dollars in debt; many cities are on the verge of insolvency; our overrun healthcare system, police forces, social services, schools, and our unsustainably generous welfare-state programs are stretched to the max. We average Americans know that. So why has this issue been allowed to be turned upside down with our “leader” creating such unsafe conditions while at the same time obstructing any economic recovery by creating more dependents than he allows producers? His friendly wealthy bipartisan elite, who want cheap foreign labor and can afford for themselves the best “border security” money can buy in their own exclusive communities, do not care that Obama tapped us out.
Have faith that average American workers – native-born and wonderful legal immigrants of all races, backgrounds, and political parties – do care because we’re the ones getting screwed as we’re forced to follow all our government’s rules while others are not required to do so. Many now feel like strangers in their own land. It’s the American worker who is forced to deal with Obama’s latest crisis with our hard-earned tax dollars while middle class wages decrease, sustainable jobs get more scarce, and communities become unrecognizable and bankrupted due to Obama’s flood of illegal immigration.
Who’s looking out for the American workers? Who has their backs? Who fights for them?
We should.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.