Palin Apologizes for 'Real America' Comments

From Greetings: So, as they say they can 'reach across the aisle', the Republicans, especially McCain and Palin, continue to try to divide America into "two Americas"... their supporters... and everyone else who they deem "unpatriotic". I refer to one of Palin's debate comments. "Say it ain't so, Joe! (McCarthy)"

Two Congressmen Face Backlash After Their Own Remarks Questioning Others' Patriotism

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2008; A04

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apologized yesterday for implying that some parts of the country are more American than others, even as similar comments by two Republican congressmen were causing a backlash that threatened their chances for reelection.

In an interview on CNN, Palin said comments she made last week in North Carolina praising small towns as "the real America" and the "pro-America areas of this great nation" were not intended to suggest that other parts of the country are less patriotic or less American.

"If that's the way it has come across, I apologize," she told CNN's Drew Griffin.

In Minnesota, little-known Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg announced yesterday that he has raised $1 million over the past four days for his House campaign, after Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann questioned Sen. Barack Obama's patriotism and recommended that the news media investigate whether other members of Congress are "pro-America" or "anti-America."

The money began flooding in from across the country after Bachmann made the comments in a seven-minute appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" on Friday. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" she told host Chris Matthews.

The backlash from Bachmann's remarks gave Tinklenberg enough donations to quadruple his television advertising, prompted the nonpartisan Cook Political Report to flip its take on the race from "likely Republican" to "tossup" and inspired a Republican who lost to Bachmann in the party's primary to launch a write-in campaign.

Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is locked in a closely contested House race in North Carolina, has also been criticized after telling a crowd Saturday that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Hayes initially denied making the remarks, but he was forced to acknowledge them after an audiotape of the speech surfaced.

"I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way," Hayes said in a statement released by his campaign. "I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

Hayes had spoken at a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., where Sen. John McCain appeared. The 10-year congressman told the crowd he wanted to "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean."

He then went on to praise Palin. "Folks, there's a great American," Hayes said. "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

A spokesman for Hayes's challenger, Democrat Larry Kissell, said the Republican's remarks revealed how he truly feels. "Mr. Hayes often talks about being able to reach across the aisle and not be limited by party loyalty," said Thomas Thacker, Kissell's spokesman. "This indicates his hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Kissell is making his second run at Hayes after coming within 329 votes of unseating the veteran lawmaker in 2006. This time, Kissell is better funded, as the national Democratic Party is putting more than $1 million into his race.

The party is also spending heavily to help Tinklenberg unseat Bachmann, who was expected to cruise to victory before her comments.

"This is quite phenomenal," said John Wodele, a spokesman for Tinklenberg. "We were doing fine, we had a good campaign going. But this has got us in a position we never thought we'd be in."

More than 17,000 individual donors sent money to Tinklenberg in the days after Bachmann's television appearance.

"Almost instantly, the first contributions came in, before I could get on the phone and talk to the campaign manager and the candidate to think about what our reaction was going to be," Wodele said. "Then I just realized we didn't need to discuss it because it was going on its own. It was happening, and it was coming in from around the country."

Michelle Marston, Bachmann's spokeswoman, said the campaign has benefited from the controversy surrounding the congresswoman's "Hardball" appearance and it too has received additional contributions, though she would not say how much.

In fact, Mike Gula and Associates, a Capitol Hill fundraising and consulting firm, has sent an e-mail seeking donations to her campaign with the subject line "Bachmann HELP -- Under Fire."

The Real Scandal

by Bob Herbert, NY Times

It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Can a rancid Congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Ms. Bachmann’s demented desire (“I would love to see an exposé like that”) is of a piece with the G.O.P.’s unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans — and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents’ supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they’ve been cast.

Which brings me to the phony Acorn scandal.

John McCain, who placed his principles in a blind trust once the presidential race heated up, warned the country during the presidential debate last week that Acorn, which has been registering people to vote by the hundreds of thousands, was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.”

It turns out that a tiny percentage of these new registrations are bogus, with some of them carrying ludicrous names like Mickey Mouse. Republicans have tried to turn this into a mighty oak of a scandal, with Mr. McCain thundering at the debate that it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Please. The Times put the matter in perspective when it said in an editorial that Acorn needs to be more careful with some aspects of its voter-registration process. It needs to do a better job selecting canvassers, among other things.

“But,” the editorial added, “for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.”

Two important points need to be made here. First, the reckless attempt by Senator McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made Acorn the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. Acorn staff members have been threatened and sickening, murderous comments have been made about supporters of Barack Obama. (Senator Obama had nothing to do with Acorn’s voter-registration drives.)

Second, when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the G.O.P. and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we’re seeing it again now.

In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made — surprise, surprise — in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.

In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republican lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.

That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another — in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it — the G.O.P. has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible — or, better yet, impossible — for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.

For Senator McCain to flip reality on its head and point to an overwhelmingly legitimate voter-registration effort as a “threat to the fabric of democracy” is a breathtaking exercise in absurdity.

Miles Rapoport, a former Connecticut secretary of state who is now president of Demos, a public policy group, remarked on the irony of elected Republican officials deliberately attempting to thwart voting. Some years ago, he said, he “and all the other secretaries of state” would bemoan the lack of interest in voting, especially among the young and the poor.

Now, he said, with the explosion of voter registration and the heightened interest in the presidential campaign, you’d think officials “would welcome that, and encourage it, and even celebrate it.” Instead, he said, in so many cases, G.O.P. officials are “trying to pare down the lists.”