Sarah Palin today floated the idea the idea of leaving the Republican Party if the GOP votes for the 1,000 page immigration bill that passed the Senate on Thursday and is now pending in the House of Representatives.
In an appearance on FNC today, the former governor of Alaska (2006-2009) and 2008 GOP presidential candidate asserted that the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate betrayed working-class Americans, legal immigrants, and the rule of law by voting for so-called comprehensive immigration reform which in her view amounts to amnesty for illegal aliens.
She referred to the bill as “ Pelosi’d ” in reference to how Obamacare was similarly voted upon without most of the lawmakers actually reading it. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously or infamously said that the solons would have to pass the bill first to find out what’s in it.
In response to a Twitter question about whether she would be willing to build a third-party “Freedom Party,” Palin suggested that she could be open to the idea of going rogue when it comes to her political affiliation:
“I love the name of that party — the ‘Freedom Party.’ And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are going to start saying, ‘You know, what’s wrong with being independent,’ kind of with that libertarian streak that much of us have. In other words, we want government to back off and not infringe upon our rights. I think there will be a lot of us who start saying ‘GOP, if you abandon us, we have nowhere else to go except to become more independent and not enlisted in a one or the other private majority parties that rule in our nation, either a Democrat or a Republican.’ Remember these are private parties, and you know, no one forces us to be enlisted in either party.”
On her Facebook page , Sarah Palin further expounded on her opposition to the immigration bill. She wrote, in part: “Legal immigrants respect the rule of law and can see how self-centered a politician must be to fill this amnesty bill with favors, earmarks, and crony capitalists’ pork, and call it good. You disrespect Hispanics with your assumption that they desire ignoring the rule of law.”
Do you agree or disagree with Sarah Palin’s reasoning for her opposition to the immigration bill? Do you think she will actually leave the GOP?