Political India: Engaging America

Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska and favourite of the United States' ultraconservative Tea Party, ended months of speculation on her political intentions by announcing that she would not be entering the race for the November 2012 presidential election.

Ms. Palin, an outspoken voice of the American right whom many expected to enter next year's primary elections for the Republican nomination, said “My family comes first,” in a letter to her followers explaining why she had opted out.

However, in an indication that other considerations such potential weakness in any electoral bid that she made, might have weighed on her decision, she said that her decision was based upon “a review of what common sense conservatives and independents have accomplished, especially over the last year.”

Many observers noted that her popularity had waned significantly over the course of the year, certainly within the Republican Party mainstream, and to an extent even amongst its more conservative factions.

For example Karl Rove, erstwhile aide to the former President, George W. Bush, recently criticised Ms. Palin's emotional public statements when he said, “It is a sign of enormous thin skin that if we speculate about her, she gets upset... I suspect if we didn't speculate about her, she'd be upset and try and find a way to get us to speculate about her ... I'm mystified.”

Her popularity also plummeted in January, in the wake of the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords in Arizona. At the time her critics connected the shooting to the fact that Ms. Palin had put Ms. Giffords on a “target list” of lawmakers whom she hoped to see defeated in the November 2010 midterm elections.

She had also used a map of various districts where these lawmakers were based, placing several of them, including Ms. Giffords', within a “crosshairs” symbol, and Ms. Palin then said on Twitter to her supporters, “'Don't retreat, instead – reload!”

Ms. Palin nevertheless continues to command a high level of popularity, as a recent bus tour that she conducted across the U.S. suggested. In that context she hinted that her involvement in politics would continue, not only as a regular commentator on the conservative news channel, Fox News, but also in other public positions.

“I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office — from the nation's Governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency,” Ms. Palin said, adding that she would continue driving the discussion for “freedom and free markets.”

Labels: Sarah Palin, US presidential election

From The Hindu

It would appear that controversy, and not fiscal conservatism, is the Tea Party’s primary philosophy.

Earlier this year, during the most heated phase of the healthcare debate, for example, there were ugly incidents of Tea Party members spitting on African-American Senators and chanting racist slurs.

Next, there were numerous instances of Sarah Palin, former Alaska Governor and right-wing icon, telling Party members to put Democratic Congressmen in their “crosshairs” a move that dangerously stoked violence.

And this weekend, the Party has again grabbed headlines for holding a “Restoring Honour” rally at the Lincoln Memorial here in Washington, the very same spot on which Martin Luther King stood exactly 47 years ago when he made his epochal “I have a dream”, speech.

With over 130,000 people signing up to the Facebook site of the rally and authorities saying they expect at least 100,000 people to turn up, the rally organised by far-right commentator Glenn Beck has come in for sharp criticism from former leaders of the American civil rights movement.

Al Sharpton, a prominent African-American leader and President of the National Action Network, described Mr. Beck’s event as an “outright attempt to flip the imagery of Dr. King... and circumventing him and distorting him”.

The National Action Network was also said to be planning the “Reclaim the Dream” march on the same day, and culminating at the very same location as the Tea Party rally.

Rally criticised

Other leaders also attacked the plan to hold the Tea Party rally. Carlton Veazey, of the National Baptist Convention and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, was quoted by ABC News as saying, “What they are trying to do is divert the nation from the agenda of Martin Luther King to their agenda, and I think that’s hijacking his legacy.”

However Mr. Beck claimed that his rally coinciding with the anniversary of Dr. King’s speech was not planned, and was “divine providence”. Ms. Palin is expected to be one of the speakers at the rally.

Yet in a move that left few doubts that he was aware of the coincidence, Mr. Beck announced that one of the speakers at the rally would be Dr. King’s niece Alveda King, who was slated to discuss Dr. King's work and legacy. She was said to have written in an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor that “Uncle Martin’s legacy is big enough to go around.”

In a rare move to contain the explosive potential of the rally, however, Mr. Beck requested Tea Party members not to bring placards and signs, “political or otherwise”. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the mainstream umbrella group for minorities which has also been at odds with the Tea Party over questions of racism, commended this display of restraint.

In a statement, NAACP president Ben Jealous said, “We commend Beck for heeding the NAACP’s call for civility by banning extreme signs and guns at his event.”

In a statement NAACP president Ben Jealous said, “We commend Beck for heeding the NAACP’s call for civility by banning extreme signs and guns at his event.”

Labels: Martin Luther King, Sarah Palin, Tea Party rally