News.com.au: Sarah Palin’s advice to Barack Obama: ‘Stop Putin with nukes’
Sarah Palin has offered unsolicited advice to US President Barack Obama on containing Russian aggression, saying “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke”.
The Republican former vice presidential candidate used a predominantly crass tone throughout her appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
But she hit home by attacking what she called a feckless Obama foreign policy that she said has helped embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Failing to show peace through strength has allowed some “very, very, very bad dudes (to) gain ground”, said Palin, who remains a darling of the far-right.
Obama “would gut our arsenal while he allows others — enemies — to enrich theirs”, she said.
“Mr President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.” The comments follow Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine last month, action which sent tensions soaring and US-Russia relations to perhaps their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
The remark may have sounded flippant, but it was red meat to conservatives mindful of similar language used by the head of the National Rifle Association, America’s largest gun lobby.
In the aftermath of a December 2012 mass shooting in Connecticut, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre poured fuel on the gun control debate by saying that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.
Just for starters, governments aren’t individuals, nukes aren’t guns, and the U.S. government ceased to be the “good guy” a very long time ago.
Russia-bashing is a loser’s game
Sarah Palin wants to show what a man she is by restarting the World War III thermonuclear brinksmanship game with Russia.
Let’s look at the facts here. The overwhelming majority of Americans, of every political stripe, do NOT want the US government to threaten Russia with war. Matter of fact, zero percent of sane people worldwide want a thermonuclear war. Candidates such as Mitt Romney who have labeled Russia as a foe or an enemy, who have demonized Vladimir Putin, or who have used Cold War rhetoric, went down to defeat in 2012. This includes those candidates who otherwise might have been worthy, notably Allen B. West in Florida. Russia-bashing is all the rage among the chattering classes of both left and right, but it’s a sure loser with actual voters.
Put it this way: If you want to win a lot of primary and general election bets in 2014, we suggest that you bet against every candidate who insists on taking a hard line against Russia.
Sarah Palin and other Republicans, including many who call themselves conservative, expect to score political points by attacking Obama for not punishing Putin to their liking.
Palin is too much the intellectual lightweight to know or care that the US set up the putsch in the Ukraine to begin with. Nor can Palin comprehend that the US has no security interests in Ukraine, the US is already $17 trillion in debt, and Russia holds all the cards. The only ones who expect to gain from further US meddling in Russia’s back yard on the taxpayers’ dime are corrupt multinational corporations who hope to loot Ukraine’s resources while gaining access to a low-wage labor market – and the political patrons of these corruptocrats. But then, if Palin had any integrity as a human being, she could never have paired up with John McCain to begin with.
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