Quitter Sarah Palin Endorses Quitter Karen Handel Based On Something Neither of Them Did

Palin Handel

This is a real pile up, which means it might work in Georgia.

Former Secretary of State Karen Handel (R-GA) has a new ad out promoting her endorsement by former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) for cutting budgets and not raising taxes. This is odd, since Karen Handel was a Secretary of State before she quit to run for Governor, and so wasn’t in charge of taxes and budgets.

It’s also weird because Sarah Palin raised taxes on the oil companies in Alaska and left Alaska with a 70% debt to GDP ratio and increased general government expenditures by over 33% percent as Mayor of Wasilla and 43% percent increase in taxes (both numbers were actually higher, but have been adjusted for inflation per PolitiFact).

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In other words, we have one failed “conservative” praising another for something neither ever did, at jobs both quit.

Watch here:

Y’all will be able to see this winner being aired in Georgia on cable and broadcast tv, according to Roll Call. Good times.

Palin is heard praising Handel, “You know her background, you know her record. The conservative who has walked the walk. Cutting budgets, not raising taxes, how often do you see that in government?”

Palin is right, we don’t see that too often if these two are the choices.

“Where somebody actually gets in there and does what they tell the people who hired them that they’ll do, they actually fulfill promises. We don’t have to be surprised when Karen comes through, doing what it is that she says that she will do. The next United States Senator from the great state of Georgia, Karen Handel!”

Handel was Georgia’s rather controversial Secretary of State from 2007 until January 2010, when she quit to run for Governor. Palin also endorsed her for that run. After losing to Republican Nathan Deal, Handel was appointed senior vice president of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure in 2011. She quit that job in February of 2012, after a public dust up with Planned Parenthood in which her efforts to defund them earned Komen a ton of negative publicity.

Handel does not support Planned Parenthood because she’s “pro-life”, and we all know that pro-lifers are against the one thing that actually reduces abortions and is, in fact, a large part of Planned Parenthood’s mission (hint: birth control).

Handel has played both sides of the Planned Parenthood fence, vigorously working to defund them while at the same time, working with them. Here’s a faceplanting position: Handel defending working with Planned Parenthood whose “mission” she doesn’t support, because they were doing a “healthy babies initiative” as well as breast and cervical cancer screenings. Here’s her argument:

First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood. During my time as Chairman of Fulton County, there were federal and state pass-through grants that were awarded to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screening, as well as a “Healthy Babies Initiative.” The grant was authorized, regulated, administered and distributed through the State of Georgia.

Guess what, healthy babies and cancer screenings are a big part of what Planned Parenthood does. Insert perpetually confused by bumper sticker slogans Republican candidate tripping over their own position here.

Just as Handel has no idea what Planned Parenthood actually does, but worked super hard to defund it because bumper stickers! So too, Palin has no idea what Handel did as Secretary of State (which is a real job with real responsibilities, no matter what Mitch McConnell’s people say, but those responsibilities just don’t happen to be setting tax rates or making budgets), and as a person who was the most socialist governor in the USA, Palin isn’t really in a position to give cred for being a conservative. Both women quit their jobs, and Palin raised taxes and increased spending, so no. Just no.

But isn’t this exactly what the Republican Party has come to? Rabid candidates cheering bumper sticker slogans they haven’t a clue how to implement and don’t really care about, and a base that eats it up and similarly doesn’t care that the candidates actually don’t stand for the very things they pretend to feel so passionately about that they might have to secede. Don’t tread on us, reality.

Handel is running in a primary field of Republicans, some of whom are pretty out there. The winner will face Democrat Michelle Nunn, whose family name (her father is former US Senator Sam Nunn) is well-known to Georgia voters on both sides of the aisle, and has some peach state valuable Republican endorsements to boot.


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