Politics | 12/12/2008 7:25 am

Powell Blasts Palin for Polarizing, Endangering Republican Party (Video)

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

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Sarah Palin helped push the Republican Party farther to the right this election – a polarization which could lead to the downfall of the party, insists Colin Powell.

Oh, and he also says Republicans should stop listening to conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and we need to rethink the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small-town values are good,” Powell told CNN in an interview that will air Sunday. “Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.”

He adds: “It was that attempt by the party to use polarization for political advantage that I think backfired.”

If the GOP doesn’t wake up and realize the far-right wing can’t carry the rest of the party, Powell – who created shockwaves throughout the political establishment when he endorsed Barack Obama for president, albeit, late in the game – thinks they could become obsolete.

“There’s nothing wrong with being conservative … but if the party wants to have a future in this country, it has to face some realities,” like it has to woo blacks and Hispanics, who are quickly becoming the majority in this country.

“I think the Republican Party needs to stop shouting at the world and the country … the party has to take a hard look at itself.”

Here’s video from the aforementioned interview.

70 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Powell failed the fundamental test of manhood when he did not resign as soon as he had doubts about the causes he was espousing. His wimpness came through to some of us. Katie. I love you, too.

By Walter Wallis on 12/12/2008 1:40 pm

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Walter —-Thank you! Well said!

By Lady Gator on 12/12/2008 2:28 pm

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Powell did resign and he is speaking out now. You can sit back and monday morning quaterback - arm chair quaterback etc. By the way he served his country in battle and doesn’t deserve the bashing he is getting. He made a mistake in judgement by going along with that lunatic Bush and Cheney. Sarah Palin scared me into paying attention to politics. The thought of her ever being in the white house other than a visitor is truly nightmare material.. Thank goodness the majority of the people see this. Her approval rating in Alaska is now 35%. Republicans rate her higher of course -she is still at 70%.

By starry Nite on 12/12/2008 9:07 pm

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Starry Nite, You are right on, I was on the fence until Sarah came along, and then I was fired up and paying attention, I THANK this site for giving me the tools to look at both sides, read what was actually written or said, no more going blindly along with what the media says! As far as Powell, he did what he did for the right reasons at the time, hind sight is always 20-20!.

By Jazzy JJ on 12/13/2008 8:06 am

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“Lead to the downfall of the party” “Lead???” Catch up Powell… it’s fallen and can’t get up.

By Buh- Bye on 12/12/2008 9:17 pm

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Dear General Powell So here you are a big ol’ retired Four (or is it 5) Star General, and you think little Sarah Palin was responsible for the polarization? The polarization has been going on since Clinton and Rush Limbaugh. Where have you been? Oh! MSNBC is not polarizing? Fox News? Obama saying certain parts of America cling to their guns and religion? Isn’t that leaving a part of America out? Hence, polarizing. Sir, respectfully, I think you need to get up to speed on this one. Little Sarah Palin is the problem? LOL. Too much. Everyone who is a died in the wool partisan is a polarizer. Sir, what about the press falling down on the job and not putting forth many facts about Obama? Only the ones they deemed necessary to get him elected? Amazing. I am fine with the way the election turned out, but I am extremely disappointed in the destruction of our democratic process during it. Everything is coming out into the open now, even the failure, bias and prejudice of the press. It’s all good.

By Frannie Em on 12/13/2008 2:22 am

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Its all perception Frannie. From my point of view the press never let up on Obama and he was the most scrutinized candidate in history. He was made to answer not only for every bit of his own history, his ethnic background, every word that came out of his and his wife’s mouths, and for the words and actions of everyone he had ever come in contact with. However, McCain got a pass. You may feel differently but that is how I and many others feel.

By DeBúrca obj on 12/13/2008 8:59 am

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DeBurca I recognize what you are talking about. Yes, in the primaries he was scrutinized until it got down to him and Hillary and then the press turned and began supporting him. When he won out over the Clintons, which many believed was hard to do, then the press became enamored and fawned over him. Once he became president elect, the press started fessing up about their biases. There were more articles written about Obama, they gave him more magazine cover photos and front page newspaper covers, and the majority of those positive, while McCains were negative. More positive articles were written about him over nothing, while more negative were written about McCain. Maybe Chicago papers printed more negative because they know his background, but what major newspaper took up Obama’s history of how he became a senator. It was pretty cutthroat. Didn’t he try once for congress and lose? He lost because lower income African Americans would not vote for him. Then in order to get on the ballot he checked and rechecked signatures of another democratic candidate to get her bumped off? He realized that affluent whites voted for him so he got together with a politico in Chicago - was his name Corrigan? And wasn’t Corrigan one of the guys who was responsible for drawing up the voting districts? Obama worked it out with him to redraw his district. He kept Hype Park, dropped the lower income African American district and then included an upscale white district. This was all information that could be found, but I never heard one person talk about it, let alone a journalist. Of course, I can’t read everything. I just researched so I would have links and there was an article in the New Yorker that talked about it, but I can’t find many journalists who followed the story more. If it had been a republican, it would have been blown up, and they would have been rotten and dirty trying to manipulate etc etc. The press gave him a pass on it, and that aids the destruction of our democratic process because there is no transparency. There was a journalist that went to Europe with Obama and other journalists, and she said she was appalled at the way her colleagues had behaved. It was to the point of fawning over Obama. That is wrong. Just plain wrong. http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDAxNzUyMjQ0MTc1ODdjZjI0Y… http://rosereport.org/?p=600

By Frannie Em on 12/13/2008 9:38 pm

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Frannie, the National Review is ultra conservative and you can put a spin on anything. You can give me links to ultra conservative websites telling me how terrible Obama is and I can do the same on the other side of the coin showing you how excellent Obama is and how terrible McCain is, there is no point in that, the election is over. As to the original point I was making regarding your previous post, I disagree with you that Obama got special, more positive treatment by the press, in fact I believe, as do many others, McCain was given a pass on many questionable issues and associations.

By DeBúrca obj on 12/14/2008 7:55 am

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DeBurca You have to forgive me. I just googled Corrigan and Obama and didn’t want to go through a long search of all the pages so just went with those. I didn’t read the small print, I thought NRO was like a radio station lol. Sorry, I have never read the Nat Review before, so didn’t know that was what it was. Yet, why didn’t anyone else pick it up. I think it was done by Chicago papers years ago, because I heard a Chicago newspaper man discussing it, and that is where I heard the name Corrigan. I think both candidates were given big passes on many questionable issues and associations, but as shown by the research of several news organizations, it was unanimous that there was favorable Obama bias. The question to me is not did the best man win? The question has to do with the destruction of the democratic process in the US because the press was so extremely biased? That is not healthy for our country.

By Frannie Em on 12/14/2008 5:43 pm

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DeBurca PS. I’ll read Huffpo if you read Nat review. heheheheh LOL

By Frannie Em on 12/14/2008 5:57 pm

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Frannie Em, well put. Mr. Colin Powell is actually heavily responsible for the downfall of his party. When he joined in with game of lying to the American people by holding up that little vial of white fake Anthrax, and trying to scare the bejesus out of everyone with the potentiality of Sadam Heussin harboring WMDs (intelligence which he knew to be faked - or at the very least coerced out of the junior analysts at the CIA by Cheney so Halliburton could make a killing) he participated in the march to war and the fleecing of America and the destruction of the credibility of the Republican leadership. The compassionate conservatives proved to be anything but. How dare he try to point the finger at that little nobody governor from Alaska. He was on the playing field. The buck stops on the stars on his tax-payer-paid-for-uniform.

By Buh- Bye on 12/13/2008 9:14 pm

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Pi You said it girl. It is like he is saying Tch Tch Tch! Gov Palin, you said something nasty, yet he got everyone behind the unwanted war that has cost the lives of many. The logic is amazing. I think he has a point about the repubs need to learn and listen to the minorities. But his oxymoronic statements of the majority becomes the minority and vice versa? He needs to rethink that. I know that as a country we refer to people of color as minorities, I never liked that term because, person for person, constitutionally we have the same rights. So the majority will become the minority. Majorities and minorities refer to numbers or percentages, so how can a majority become a minority, impossible. I wish he would rethink that and express it better.

By Frannie Em on 12/13/2008 9:52 pm

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He’s just trying to wheedle his way into Obama’s administration. Ingratiating himself. It’s so transparent. He messed up. Now he’s trying to resurrect that career. But HIS credibility? Forget it. Gone. Forever gone. Many families today are mourning the loss of their sons, daughters, husbands and wives because of Powell. And I’m not just talking American families, either. We invaded a sovereign nation, unprovoked… and now it’s all little Sarah Palin’s fault that Republicans have tanked? Palin’s fault. Yeah, right. A gal who was on the stage for about what… a month?

By Buh- Bye on 12/13/2008 11:36 pm

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Pi The guy should never wheedle again, we have had enough of that. The republicans tanked because they have many problems that they need to solve, this will wake them up. I remember hearing after Kerry’s defeat the same thing about the democrats, there were complaints about intra party problems, one side of the party fighting the other. The same is happening to the republicans, the right wing conservatives vs the regular old republican. They have to figure out what they are really about. Going to the religious right platform will not work, it leaves too many people out. In 2006 the dems took a majority in congress because Rahm Emmanuel (which was genius) got more conservative dems (the Blue Dog democrats) to run in heavily republican districts. (Sorry, don’t want to sound like a history lesson, just setting up my point) I think the worry for the dems now is, will some of them vote with the republicans if the Obama administration goes too liberal? This is going to be a whole new ball game. So I think both parties have a lot of work cut out for them. I think change is coming, but I don’t think it will take the form that anyone thinks it will. The circumstances in our economy are dire.

By Frannie Em on 12/14/2008 5:33 pm