This may be rough transcript, but here's the last passage on the GOP bench from Palin pic.twitter.com/snAR2VWHmI
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) January 24, 2015
Palin says Obama is "like an overgrown little boy whose just acting kind of spoiled. And moms, we just don’t put up with that, do we?”
— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) January 24, 2015
Is it possible that she’s high? RT @politicoroger: Palin: Obama "is so over it. America, he’s just not that into you." #IAFreedomSummit
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) January 24, 2015
My personal takeaway, after reviewing the reports on yesterday’s Iowa Freedumb Freedom Summit, is that Palin — wittingly or not — has officially reached the Distracting Shiny Object stage of her political career. You can say many bad things about Citizens United, the group that paid for this dog & pony show, but they’re experts in the dark arts of political showmanship; Caribou Barbie stood in the spotlight flapping her arms to attract all the potentially dangerous lamestream media mockery, while the actual candidates field-tested their spiels and ran their patter past a discerning portion of the Repub in-every-sense base. Pay no attention to the (money) man behind the curtain!
Mr. Pierce, in Esquire, on “King for A Day“:
… The event itself was a measure of how politics in the country have changed over the past 25 years. It was organized by Congressman Steve King, defender of conventional light-bulbs, flush toilets, and the southern border, and it was run by Citizens United, the brainchild of David Bossie who, in 1991, was nothing more than a low-rent ratfcker chasing Bill Clinton’s penis all over Arkansas but who now is the overlord of a large and lucrative propaganda operation, an independent base of considerable power beyond the reach and influence of the Republican party, which is why Bossie could provide a platform for presidential wannabes on which they were free to rail against the “Republican establishment.”…
King introduces Gov. Branstad by reminding crowd that he was once tasked to arrest Jane Fonda at a Vietnam War protest. Big applause.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 24, 2015
That was forty-five years ago. This crowd can cherish a grudge like it was their sickly first-born, as my Irish granny used to say.
The NYTimes‘ prim take:
… The daylong forum, billed as an informal kickoff to the 2016 campaign, was attended by about 1,200 people, many of whom ardently oppose the centrist views that tend to prevail in a general election.
The speakers, some of them experienced presidential campaigners, came to test and tweak their messages, to seek second chances and to introduce themselves to voters whose passion for conservative causes makes them more likely to attend a caucus and launch a candidate out of a field of contenders…
Dave Weigel, at Bloomberg Politics:
… Now that it’s in the books, the “unofficial kickoff of 2016” will shape how the overcrowded Republican field campaigns. Some commentators bracketed the event with stories about the absent candidates, like Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Yahoo News’s Jon Ward contrasted the most frenzied applause lines from Des Moines with the speech Bush had just given to the National Automobile Dealers Association, calling for a “hopeful, optimistic message” in 2016. Politico’s Roger Simon, who reported from the event, fretted about the GOP’s “seriousness deficit” and a “clown van” that would allow fringe candidates to shape the Republican conversation.