Sarah Palin's Iowa speech backs Tea Party over Republican elites.

I seriously find it painful to watch this woman talking. It's such an explosion of clichés.

Happy Constitution Day. Do you love your freedom? Are you proud to be an American?...

It is just so great to be with patriots here today....

Of course, she had the usual attacks on Liberals and the "lamestream media", but she appeared to hold special contempt for Republicans who were not fully on board with the Tea Party agenda.

She warned the GOP that it was "time for unity now", whilst warning them that they didn't know what they were doing and asking them to unite or get out of her way.

"We can't blow it, GOP, but we won't wait for that political playbook to be handed to us from on high from the political elites. We won't do that... It may take some renegades to get us there. It may take folks shaping things up to get us there."

As the Guardian put it, it was "a typically spirited speech that didn't so much torture the English language as waterboard it beyond the point of submission".

Palin called for Republican party unity but – perhaps buoyed by recent successes for the Tea Party in Delaware and Alaska – she also took a few swipes at her own party. In one particularly overwrought passage, Palin said:

"It's been made absolutely clear that those who hold these, I think, common-sense and pretty mainstream positions, who are attacked, unfortunately, some destructive false shots don't just come from the far left, and that's what I'll admit to learning in these last couple of years.

"But those in the liberal media: you're worse for using, in that lamestream media, those unsubstantiated untrue hits, it's not fair to our country, it's not fair to the electorate, it's not fair to our democracy, and it is not fair to our troops willing to sacrifice all for our freedoms, journalists, ok?"

She imagines that she holds "common-sense and mainstream positions", whilst asking "Karl" to "come here to Iowa", an acknowledgement that some Tea Party candidates are too extreme even for Rove to celebrate their candidacy.

She then slipped into hyperbole by insisting that, come January, America is going to see the largest tax rise in it's history. But she didn't stop there.

These moms and pops will have to lay off workers. We are warned it means families will lose health insurance, losing homes; more and more families having to go on welfare. They are having to rely on government then, being more beholden to the federal government. And this is a vicious cycle and it makes you wonder. Ask yourself, do you think these failed policies are purposeful?

You see, in Palin's world, the Democrats want the electorate to be dependent on hand outs.

She then repeated Reagan's cliché that "government is not the solution, government is the problem." and depicted Obama's search for peace in the Middle East as picking a fight with Israel "over housing policy", reducing settlement building on the West Bank to the level of a zoning dispute.

She then had the gall to state, "That's not foreign policy, that's just foolish". She's calling others "foolish" whilst repeating her recent cry for "a little refudiation now and then".

This woman thinks her stupidity can be celebrated the less she is ashamed of it. Why else would she be reminding us of times when she has mangled the English language? Tortured it into submission.

It was a painfully clichéd speech, yet one which warned people like Karl Rove to get out of the way of her and the Tea Party movement.

She clearly thinks that now is the time for the Tea Party movement to make huge political gains, although some of the people they have elected as candidates make many of us think that they have blown it before the election has even begun in earnest.

So there she stands, the bland leading the bland. Enjoying her moment in the sun. Although, come November, like Icarus, I think the Tea Party will discover that they have flown far too close to it.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Palin, Tea party protesters