Labor & Employment Law

Trumka: Palin?s Rhetoric Is Dangerous, Poisonous

By James Parks

It?s a speech that is getting a big reaction from the press and pundits across the country and it hasn?t even been delivered yet. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will tell the Alaska AFL-CIO convention in Anchorage tonight that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the self appointed queen of the ultra-conservative movement, has betrayed her fake populist image and, instead, is spouting dangerous and ?poisonous? rhetoric that could incite her followers to violence..   

According to his prepared remarks, Trumka will say Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, has come ?close to calling for violence,” and will go down in history like another discredited Republican Joe McCarthy.

But in typical Palin style, she couldn?t bring herself to face the press to respond to Trumka. Instead, she threw a temper tantrum on Twitter, questioning Trumka?s motives. But Trumka?s message was crystal clear: Palin, whose husband was a union member, left working families in Alaska behind when she tried to trade up to FOX News and the Tea Party. Despite her faux populism and image as caring about ordinary people, her actions and policies and the candidates she supports speak volumes about who she is.

For the record, here?s what Trumka plans to say tonight in Anchorage:

In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. ?Don?t retreat? reload? may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She?s using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She?s on the wrong side of the line there. She?s getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We?ve got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes.

Down in Tyler, Texas, she?s talking about ? and I quote ? ‘union thugs.’ What? Her husband?s a union man. Is she calling him a thug? Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are. That?s poisonous. There?s history behind that rhetoric. That?s how bosses and politicians in decades past justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers.

Quite frankly, America works because lots of people contribute lots of ideas?that?s good?even when some of them are just plain wrong. But people need to come to the table in good faith. That?s not Sarah Palin. She?ll go down in history like McCarthy. Palinism will become an ugly word. 

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).