Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday said President Obama is imposing a “backasswards” plan on “the country we love,” and defended Nevada Republican Sharron Angle after the Senate candidate aiming to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was criticized and mocked for her position on Social Security by Obama this week.
“LasVegas RJ editorial recaps Obama lecture 2 Runnin’ Rebs,” Palin wrote to her 187,000 followers on Twitter Sunday morning, referring to the president’s speech in Las Vegas Thursday night and using the name of the University of Nevada Las Vegas’ mascot — the Running Rebels — to characterize to his audience.
“He’s got most disconnected, backasswards plan ever imposed on the country we love,” Palin said of Obama.
Palin was following up a tweet linking to a scathing editorial in the Review-Journal that blasted Obama for his criticism of Angle on Social Security Thursday evening at a fundraiser for Reid. The editorial also said Obama has offered no alternatives to fix the problem with entitlement programs that are on the path to insolvency and is running the economy into the ground with anti-business measures.
Top White House spokesmen David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs were on the defensive during Sunday morning’s talk shows, following a week in which questions about whether Obama is anti-business hit the mainstream.
“When you’re governing in a very difficult economic time, the worst economy since the Great Depression — and that’s what we walked into — people are going to be unhappy, and they have a right to be unhappy. These are difficult times,” Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I don’t think it’s surprising that the American people are frustrated after having lost eight and a half million jobs,” Gibbs said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m not here to unfold the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. OK? We’ve got a lot of work to do, and the president understands that.”
Palin was more active than usual on Twitter Sunday morning, preceding her mentions of the Review-Journal editorial by defending Angle, a candidate who she did not endorse in the Republican primary.
“Sharon Angle’s right,” Palin wrote, misspelling Angle’s first name, “New workers should get to invest some Social Security withholdings in their own savings accounts & Washington to pay promised benefits to older workers.”
Though Angle was criticized most loudly on Social Security by Obama Thursday at a fundraiser for Reid, Palin instead addressed her response to Reid, a Democrat and four-term senator.
“What part of ‘The System is Going Bankrupt’ don’t you understand, Mr. Reid?” Palin wrote.
Obama’s criticism of Angle Thursday had a decidedly derisive tone.
“I mean, look, Harry Reid’s opponent doesn’t just believe in these old, worn-out theories. On a lot of these issues, she favors an approach that’s even more extreme than the Republicans we got in Washington,” Obama said to a raucous crowd. “That’s saying something. That is saying something. I mean, she wants to phase out and privatize Social Security and Medicare.”
A person in the audience shouted in response: “Phase her out!”
Angle’s position is a familiar conservative one. She believes that younger workers should be able to create their own private accounts that part of their Social Security taxes are funneled into, so they control the money and not the government. Conservatives make the case that in the system as it exists, younger workers will pay far more into Social Security than they will ever get out in the future, in large part because of demographics as the Baby Boom generation retires and places a heavier and heavier burden on the fund.
But Angle’s original website, which was taken down by Republicans after she won the primary and replaced with a more polished site, only to be recreated by Democrats, said that Social Security should be “transitioned out.”
Palin’s missives are interesting for a few reasons. It continues a pattern of Palin responding to Obama and Democratic leaders on select issues with the megaphone she has built for herself through social media such as Twitter and Facebook.
Secondly, Palin did not endorse Angle, who has had an extremely rocky past few weeks since winning the Republican nomination in early June. Angle was endorsed by the Tea Party Express, but is viewed by many Republicans as so inexperienced and unpolished that she was the only Republican in the primary incapable of beating Reid, whose unpopularity in Nevada is high.