During the 2008 presidential campaign, GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin made what has turned out to be a prescient remark about the relevance of a U.S. president's resolve and its potential impact on Russia's posture with the old Soviet Union's satellite states. She observed: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."
Many in the press ridiculed that notion. Among them was Blake Hounshell, who was then blogging at Foreign Policy Magazine. Characterizing Palin's notion as "strange," he wrote: "As we've said before, this is an extremely far-fetched scenario." Hounshell, now a deputy editor at Politico Magazine, has handled Palin's self-effacing Facebook "I told you so" ("I could see this one from Alaska") and pile-ons by center-right blogs too numerous to mention with tweets demonstrating the class, dignity, and good sportsmanship you would expect from the high-brow commentariat, i.e., none (HT Twitchy).
First, Hounshell tried sarcasm:
Hounshell failed to link to anything about Palin's prediction, the better to ensure that many will not learn how he has been totally owned.
Then he in essence tried to say Palin was just lucky:
When that didn't work, he went to the victim card, accompanied by the obligatory non-flattering Palin photo:
Note that all of a sudden, Hounshell figured out how to include a link in a tweet. Amazing.
There's only one problem. Palin never named Hounshell, nor did she call him or anyone else a "dummy" or anything similar.
But it feeds Hounshell's apparent persecution complex, so I guess that's okay. (/sarcasm)
The story by Philip Bump at The Wire to which Hounshell linked is an embarrassing example of sour grapes (links were in original; bold is mine):
... it doesn't really seem like she deserves credit for the Ukraine thing. For one thing, calling what's happening at the moment an "invasion" is overly strong, though Ukraine is certainly alarmed at the seizure of an airport in the Crimea region. (The BBC has a good explainer of what's happening.) It is certainly not comparable to the 2008 situation in Georgia — so far ...
Palin's 2008 prediction was that responses of the type seen thus far from the White House "would only encourage" Putin to invade. At the time Bump's post was written, Putin's mischief-making in Crimea and other moves clearly indicated that Putin was encouraged — and emboldened. Palin was right, and all of Bump's bluster won't change that.
Effective today, Hounshell and Bump are completely wrong — "Russian armed forces effectively seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula on Saturday." That's an "invasion," guys.
One thing you'll never see the likes of Blake Hounshell or Philip Bump admit is that Sarah Palin clearly has a far more perceptive and realistic view of America's foreign policy challenges and a far more consistent, values-driven framework on how to meet them than the current Obama administration's White House and State Department.
Friday evening, Charles Krauthammer said that "I think everybody is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement." Not quite everybody, Charles.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
