- 7 February 2010
- 3 Comments
- MEK, US-Iran War
Following her keynote address to the national Tea Party Convention yesterday, Sarah Palin added fuel to the the flames of speculation about her possible bid for the presidency in 2012. During an interview with her now-employer Fox News, Palin was asked her opinion about President Obama’s chances for reelection:
If the election were today, “I do not think Obama would be re-elected,” she said. But he has a chance if he gets “tough” on terrorism, she added. “Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years.”
Forgetting for a moment that it is the Congress, not the President, that is empowered with the authority to declare war, this is a pretty brash statement, even for Palin. It is rare that a public figure would call for military action against Iran so explicity — and to call for such drastic action as a purely political ploy breaks an even stronger taboo in Washington circles.
So it cannot be a coincidence that Palin’s advice to President Obama comes just days after prominent anti-Islam activist Daniel Pipes wrote nearly the identical thing in the National Review. “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” was the title of the article, which my colleague Jamal picked apart well enough that I don’t have to here. But I thought it interesting that Palin would so casually align herself on foreign policy issues — by all accounts her political Achilles Heel — with such a divisive figure as Pipes.