So Sarah Palin can't tell the difference between North Korea and South Korea. It's not going to make any difference. The people who want her to be president couldn't give a damn because they are being squeezed by a bad economy and Palin is counting on that.
It's a point explored by Bill Clinton's secretary of Labour Robert Reich in his latest post.
Consider this: Palin's support base is the white working class, specifically the people who only have a high school degree or less. While unemployment in America is sitting at 9.6%, in her support base it's 20%. Reich writes: "More than anything else, the Palin Strategy depends on the continuing fear and anger of America's white working class. She's betting that their economic prospects will not improve by 2012, or even by 2016 and beyond. Sadly, this is likely to be the case."
Her strategy around that is clear. She attacks people like Ben Bernanke and the quantitative easing, claiming it will lead to inflation. Palin says: ""[E]veryone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it's not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed's decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That's like an extra tax on earnings."
That's Palin's great strength: she knows how to spell things out clearly even when it's dead wrong. Inflation is not a function of what you see on supermarket shelves and inflation in America is now sitting at 1% which everyone is saying is too low.
Still, Palin is not one to let the facts get in the way. She knows what buttons to push, and supermarket and petrol prices are among them. As long as the US economy continues to stutter and as long as US unemployment remains high, she will be in the box seat for 2012.
This a was a weird post. I wonder is it just that it is a slow news day or a is this a symptom Palin Derangement Syndrome?
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=463364218434