Leah Barkoukis is the Assistant Editor at Townhall.com/Townhall Magazine.
Author Photo credit: Jensen Sutta Photography
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Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has called the latest developments in the country a coup d’etat, denying speculations of his resignation. He also accused international mediators of not fulfilling their obligations.
Follow RT’s LIVE UPDATES
“I’m always threatened with ultimatums. I’m not going to leave the country,” Yanukovich said in an interview with local UBR TV channel. “I’m not going to resign. I’m a legitimately elected president.”
The interview with the embattled president was broadcast right after the opposition claimed it had received verbal assurances that Yanukovich was resigning.
But as parliament deputies said they were waiting for the written confirmation on his resignation, the president announced his plans to travel across the country’s southeast, which is “so far, less dangerous.”
“Everything that is happening today is, to a greater degree, vandalism and bandits and a coup d’etat,” Yanukovich said in a televised statement.
On Saturday, Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) held a new emergency session, during which it passed a law on the return to the 2004 constitution without the president’s signature, saying that the president had removed himself from power.
It also appointed a new head of the Ministry of Interior and a new head speaker of the Rada. In addition, parliament ruled to free former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko from prison and set early presidential elections for May 25.
But Yanukovich says the motions passed by parliament are illegitimate, and says he will not sign any of them.
“The decisions that they are now approving are illegal. I won’t sign anything,” he told UBR journalists in Kharkov. “This is not an opposition, these are bandits.”
The president said his car had been shot at while he was traveling to the airport to go to Kharkov.
“But I have no fear. I am overwhelmed by grief for our country. I feel responsibility,” he said.
“I’m doing everything to prevent the bloodshed of the people who are close to me,” Yanukovich stated, referring to his supportive deputies who he said are being threatened, beaten, and targeted by stone-throwing rioters.
He compared the situation in turbulent Ukraine – which is facing its worst political crisis in modern history – to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s.
“We now see the same what was [happening] in 1930s, when the Nazis came to power. [They] forbade [political] parties…It’s the same now – [they] ban the party, stalk, beat people, burn down offices,” he said.
Yanukovich is determined to do whatever it takes to “stop the bloodshed” and protect Ukraine “from a split.” But the president admits: “I still don’t know how I am going to do it.”
The leader has stated that he expects international mediators to fulfill their commitments.
“What we are going to do depends on the reaction from the international community, how they are going to meet their responsibilities,” Yanukovich said. “The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, still legitimate, reported yesterday he was speaking with Europeans, with Poland’s head of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the US. I hope to hold negotiations in the coming days.”
Yanukovich will call on EU mediators to stop “actions by radicals.”
“I was given guarantees of all the international mediators, with whom I worked. They gave security assurances. I’ll see how they will perform this role,” he said.
On Friday, Yanukovich and opposition leaders signed an EU-brokered agreement on ending the political crisis in the country. While it stipulated five major conditions, the agreement did not give the opposition the power to impose new laws or appointments without presidential approval, though they have attempted to do just that.
Thus the conditions of the deal are being clearly violated. However, the EU – which mediated the deal between the opposition and ruling government – remains quiet.
1. Within 48 hours of the signing of this agreement, a special law will be adopted, signed and promulgated, which will restore the Constitution of 2004 including amendments passed until now. Signatories declare their intention to create a coalition and form a national unity government within 10 days thereafter.
2. Constitutional reform, balancing the powers of the President, the government and parliament, will start immediately and be completed in September 2014.
3. Presidential elections will be held as soon as the new Constitution is adopted but no later than December 2014. New electoral laws will be passed and a new Central Election Commission will be formed on the basis of proportionality and in accordance with the OSCE & Venice commission rules.
4. Investigation into recent acts of violence will be conducted under joint monitoring from the authorities, the opposition and the Council of Europe.
On Saturday, the foreign ministers of France, Poland, and Germany – the trio that most actively helped reach the deal between the rival sides in Kiev – admitted that opposition leaders have broken the agreement, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The three EU ministers have spoken separately with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has voiced concerns over the Ukrainian opposition’s failure to fulfill the conditions of the agreement.
“The opposition not only has failed to fulfill a single of its obligations but is already presenting new demands all the time, following the lead of armed extremists and thugs whose actions pose direct threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and constitutional order,” Lavrov told the ministers.
Russia’s FM has called on his counterparts to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition to stop what he described as rampages by its supporters.
“It is time to stop misleading the international community and pretend that today’s Maidan represents the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Lavrov said.
But it seems that German Foreign Minister Steinmeier also has a separate agreement with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
“Agreed with German Foreign Minister Steinmeier today to support new government in Ukraine and push for vital IMF financial package,” Hague stated on Twitter.
Sergey Lavrov also voiced his concerns in a talk with US Secretary of State John Kerry. The Russian FM told his counterpart that Kiev had been taken over by “illegal extremist groups,” adding that the situation in Ukraine has sharply escalated, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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If you can move toward becoming more independent of the “system”, now would be a good time to do so.
* All comments may be directed to http://petersantilli.com/chat, or speak to Pete directly by calling during the live show at: 218-862-9829 Mon-Sat 10:00 am PST
Tuesday; October 22, 2013 - Los Angeles – 10:00 am
The Pete Santilli Show With Special Guest: Michael Snyder
How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time? Isn’t their wealth supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of us? Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works. Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of “expensive” American workers on their payrolls as much as they can. If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it. Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite.
The Obama administration and the mainstream media continue to insist that we are in the midst of an “economic recovery”, but that is a total joke. Does the chart posted below look like a recovery to you?…
Americans are leaving the labor force in droves. If the labor force participation rate was at the same level that it was when Obama first became president, the official unemployment rate would be up around 10 percent and everyone would be wondering when the “economic depression” would finally end.
It is funny how our perceptions of reality are so greatly shaped by what our televisions tell us to think.
Below I have posted a chart of the “inactivity rate” of U.S. men in the 25 to 54-year-old age group. As you can see, the percentage of men in their prime working years that are not employed and not considered to be unemployed either has been rising steadily…
We have millions upon millions of men just sitting around and doing essentially nothing. Not that women are doing so much better. In fact, the labor force participation rate for women is at a 24 year low.
Some people may be tempted to think that all of this is happening because more Americans are choosing to stay home and raise children. But that is not the case at all. In fact, in a previous article I showed that the marriage rate in the U.S. is at an all-time low and the birth rate for young women in this country is also at an all-time low.
People are not staying home because of family obligations. Rather, people are staying home because there aren’t enough jobs available.
And when Americans that are actually employed do lose their jobs, it is taking them a very, very long time to find another one. Just check out the following chart…
Once again, I must ask – does that look like a “recovery” to you?
Obama can say the word “recovery” as much as he would like, but that does not make it a reality.
So is anyone out there actually doing well?
Yes, as I have talked about frequently, some pockets of the country are doing quite nicely. In fact, government workers (think Washington D.C.) and finance workers (Wall Street, etc.) are tied for the lowest rates of unemployment in the nation (3.9 percent).
But for almost everyone else, things are very hard right now and poverty continues to grow.
Just today, I came across a recent study that discovered thatnearly half of all public students in the United States come from low income homes.
That is an incredible number.
But this is just the beginning of our problems. Our debt continues to grow by leaps and bounds and our big banks are engaging inextraordinarily reckless behavior. As Richard Russell recently discussed, it is only a matter of time before this entire house of cards comes tumbling down…
In this whole process, debt has been created to an extent never seen before in history. So far, the debt has been managed with super-low interest rates and borrowing. But the compounding process goes on, and the debt mountain continues to grow. So, to be brief, I see the theme of today as the “haves” doing whatever they have to — to remain in power.
The dangers in the background for the haves are the possibilities that (1) interest rates will begin to advance, and (2) inflation will rise and be so visible that even the common man will recognize it, and begin to protest, or even revolt and (3) the whole debt structure will rise so high that it will topple over of its own weight and take down the entire world economy with it.
So as bad as things are today, the truth is that they are far, far better than what is eventually coming.
If you want to get a glimpse of the future of the U.S. economy, just check out what has happened to Greece…
Greeks are on average almost 40 percent poorer than they were in 2008, data indicated, laying bare the impact of a brutal recession and austerity measures the government may be forced to extend into next year.
Gross disposable incomes fell 29.5 percent between the second quarters of 2008 and 2013, statistics service ELSTAT said on Tuesday. Adding in cumulative consumer price inflation over the same period takes the decline close to 40 percent.
As you can see from the charts posted above, our economy has never even come close to getting back to the level that we were at before the last financial crisis.
And now the next wave of the economic collapse is approaching.
Right now, Spain has an unemployment rate that is above 26 percent and Greece has an unemployment rate that is above 27 percent.
We will eventually be heading up toward those levels.
As millions of good paying jobs continue to be shipped overseas, and as technology continues to eliminate millions of our jobs, the unemployment situation in this country will continue to grow even worse.
And whenever the next great financial crisis inevitably strikes, that will greatly accelerate our employment problems.
If you can move toward becoming more independent of the “system”, now would be a good time to do so. The job that you have today may not be there next month or next year.
We are moving into the greatest period of economic instability in U.S. history.
Get ready for it while you still can.
Adam Kokesh UPDATE
Joining Pete today was Anthony Antinello, media representative for Adam Kokesh, with an update on Adam’s status while being held a political prisoner in Washington DC.
Broke on: October 4th 2013
by: jeffrey
Filed under: Blog
On July 4th Adam Kokesh did the most epic civil disobedience in modern history because he believes in liberty and that
self-defense is a civil right. click here to see the video.
On July 9th his home was raided and ransacked for 5 hours by over 50 officers with a tank and helicopters. click here to see the aftermath.
Since then, Adams team was sabotaged, all the money raised for legal defense was stolen.click here for the details.
Despite all that, he has been podcasting from jail. click here to see the podcast’s.
He and his team are working hard to use this opportunity to spread the message & raise awareness of jury nullification. for more info click here.
We need all the help we can get, email kim@adamvstheman.com if you want to volunteer.
Adams trial is coming up on Oct.24th & we are hosting a rally that evening in DC, to help out with that email salvi@adamvstheman.com & RSVP on the FB event page.
******************
FRESH OFF THE 21ST CENTURY WIRE
21st Century Wire says… Only a month and a half ago, dedicated francophile US Secretary of State John Kerry and French President François Hollande were beaming with excitement, as they shared a warm political bed together while planning a war with Syria. As they counted the coming cruise missile profits together, everything couldn’t have been more perfect. And then…The transatlantic romance is on the rocks, again. Washington DC’s insatiable international digital spy network, the NSA, has been caught collecting millions of electronic French letters and phone calls – in secret, and to stop terrorism. Or is it merely to justify billions in US government contract expenditures. Anyone above a fifth grade education level should really be able to figure that one out by now.A report was released this past Monday, detailing how the NSA has sucked in more than 70 million French phone records in one month.
Another violation. This is just the latest in a long list of long distance digital rape on the part of the United States. This week also saw how the NSA spy network has been used in order to gain advanced commercial intelligence on Mexico for years – and exposed as being all for the benefit of insider US business and investor interests. Whose surprised?
What an embarrassment for Monsieur Kerry, who has been tasked with making yet another weak case for the US government, by trying to explain away the illegal actions of his government. Left to do damage control, Kerry insists that France is still “one of our oldest allies in the world”, but protecting people from terrorism is so “very complicated, very challenging task.”
Not the world’s most convincing actor, John Kerry, is trying hard to act concerned about foreign privacy.
His chief concerns are as far from ethics and international law as one could imagine. Here’s what really upsetting Washington’s most interesting man:
“Will I still be invited for raclette (cheese) and champagne parties in Aix-en-Provence this spring?”
This will be burning on Kerry’s mind over the holidays.
Next, the Teflon Don (photo, left) ponders the scandal… never one to willingly take any responsibility for anything that might be construed as negative, Obama avoids the issue altogether. This is because there’s no room for America’s reputation when he’s so obsessed with looking out for his own.Rather than getting a executive statement from America’s salamander-n-chief, President Obama has instead opted to call Hollande in private to try and re-spin the issue, in what the White House has labeled as “recent disclosures in the press — some of which have distorted our activities and some of which raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies.”What Kerry and Obama fail to realise is that, outside of their own private France on the millionaire ski slopes of Chamonix and aboard the yachts in Cannes, the rest of the country could not give a toss about America’s inflated national security concerns, and will hate the American government for abusing their trust.
Hollande’s hands are tied on this one. Regardless, the backlash has already begun. According to RT, the French as pissed off in a big way:
France has called for an explanation for the “unacceptable” and “shocking” reports of NSA spying on French citizens. Leaked documents revealed the spy agency records millions of phone calls and monitors politicians and high-profile business people.
The US Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin was summoned by the French Foreign Ministry to account for the espionage allegations on Monday morning.
“I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry],” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told press. He added that “we must quickly assure that these practices aren’t repeated.”
The media scandal triggered a phone call between US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande who, according to the White House, discussed “legitimate questions”raised by US “friends and allies” about how the surveillance capabilities are employed. Obama reportedly assured Hollande that the US was reviewing the way it gathers intelligence.
In addition, citing the report on French publication Le Monde, Interior Minister Manuel Valls spoke out on national television against US spy practices.
The US government is out of control and everyone knows it. Rather than dealing with the problem head on, and making correction to an illegal government operation, men like Barack Obama and John Kerry have chose instead to cover for themselves and the program. So no lesson learned.
That is Washington DC in a nutshell today – inept and unable to act honourably on the international theatre.
THE BUNKER NEWS BREAK COURTESY OF 21ST CENTURY WIRE
Episode 5 of Sunday Wire Radio Show with host Patrick Henningsen aired Sunday Oct 6th…This week’s theme: ‘Spies, Lies and Common Law’ This week THE SUNDAY WIRE talked with former MI5 whistleblower and author David Shayler, for a frank discussion about 9/11 and 7/7, as well as realities of Common Law in the 21st century, followed by regular contributor and pundit Basil Valentine and his rant on elitists in Britain. The final hour we spoke with Brian Gerrish of the UK Column to discuss the shadow state in Britain and elite’s plans for a OneWorld Government who are now constructing a corporate state in Europe and the US – this show is guaranteed to stimulate the mind!
LISTEN IN EVERY SUNDAY: 5pm-8pm BST (GMT) | 12pm-3pm EST | 9am-12pm PST
Previous Episodes: The Sunday Wire with Patrick Henningsen – September 29th – Episode #004 The Sunday Wire with Patrick Henningsen – September 22nd – Episode #003 The Sunday Wire with Patrick Henningsen – August 25th – Episode #002 The Sunday Wire with Patrick Henningsen – August 18th – Episode #001
Pete Santilli – Host/Chief Editor/Owner Guerilla Media Network Susannah Cole – Co-Host/Content Producer/Journalist Patrick Henningsen – Producer – Bunker News Break – Investigative Journalist Ashley Jones – Guest Coordinator – Staff Support Jill Hornbeck – Assistant to Ms Cole and Pete Santilli – Social Media Support – Staff Support – Marketing Bryan McClain – WebMaster – Guerillamedianetwork.com
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In broad daylight and in a crowed market. Witness: “You could hear the man skull hit the ground”
BEIRUT — The U.N. experts investigating last week’s alleged chemical weapons strike outside Damascus left Syria and crossed into neighboring Lebanon early Saturday, departing hours after President Barack Obama said he is weighing “limited and narrow” action against a Syrian regime that the administration has accused of launching the deadly attack.
An Associated Press crew saw the U.N. personnel enter Lebanon from Syria through the Masnaa border crossing and then drive in a 13-car convoy to the Beirut airport. After four days of on-site inspections, the team wrapped up its investigation Friday into the suspected chemical attack on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21.
The experts take with them blood and urine samples from victims as well as soil samples from the affected areas for examination in laboratories in Europe. The United Nations has said it will try to expedite its final report, and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane is to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later Saturday on the investigation.
With the inspectors now out of Syria, the looming confrontation between the U.S. and President Bashar Assad’s regime moves one step closer to coming to a head. Most observers viewed U.S. military action as unlikely while the U.N. team was still on the ground inside Syria, but the American administration has made clear that it is confident in its assessment and could act before the United Nations releases the results of its probe.
Obama has said that if he opts for a military strike, any operation would be limited in scope and only aimed at punishing Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons.
But U.S. action carries the potential to trigger retaliation by the Syrian regime or its proxies against U.S. allies in the region, such as Jordan, Turkey and Israel. That would inject a dangerous new dynamic into a Syrian civil war that has already killed more than 100,000 people, forced nearly 2 million to flee the country and inflamed sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
While Obama has long been wary of U.S. military involvement in the conflict, the administration on Friday forcefully made its case for action against Syria in the wake of last week’s events outside Damascus. It accused the Assad regime of carrying out what it says was a chemical attack on Aug. 21 that killed at least 1,429 people – far more than previous estimates – including more than 400 children.
With France as his only major public ally, Obama told reporters he has a strong preference for multilateral action.
“Frankly, part of the challenge we end up with here is a lot of people think something should be done but nobody wants to do it,” he said.
The U.S. already has warships in place in the eastern Mediterranean Sea near Syria’s coastal waters. The vessels are armed with cruise missiles, long a first-line weapon of choice for presidents because they can strike distant targets without need of air cover or troops on the ground.
The Syrian government dismissed the administration’s claims as “flagrant lies” akin to faulty Bush administration assertions before the Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. A Foreign Ministry statement read on state TV late Friday said that “under the pretext of protecting the Syrian people, they are making a case for an aggression that will kill hundreds of innocent Syrian civilians.”
In Damascus, residents braced themselves in anticipation of strikes.
“We are anticipating it starting tonight, since the inspectors have left, but we don’t really know,” said Nour, who lives on the outskirts of Damascus.
“Just in case, we stocked up on some water and food. Our building has a basement that we can use as a shelter. The building supervisor started preparing it a couple of days ago, he cleaned it and we put some pillows, blankets, water and a first aid kit with basic medications,” she added. She gave only her first name for security reasons.
Syrian state TV on Saturday morning broadcast footage of Syrian soldiers training, fighter jets soaring in the sky and tanks firing at unseen targets, all to the backdrop of martial music. The station’s morning talk shows were dominated by discussions about a potential U.S. military strike.
Obama met with his national security aides at the White House on Friday and then with diplomats from Baltic countries, saying he has not yet made a final decision on punitive strikes.
But the administration did nothing to discourage the predictions that action was imminent. That impression was heightened both by sharply worded remarks from Secretary of State John Kerry and the release of an unclassified intelligence assessment that cited “high confidence” that the Syrian government carried out the attack.
In addition to the dead, the assessment reported that about 3,600 patients “displaying symptoms consistent with nerve agent exposure” were seen at Damascus-area hospitals after the attack.
In his remarks, Kerry added that “a senior regime official who knew about the attack confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime, reviewed the impact and actually was afraid they would be discovered.”
The assessment did not explain its unexpectedly large count of 1,429 deaths, far in excess of an estimate from Doctors Without Borders from earlier this week that put the toll at 355. Not surprisingly – given the nature of the disclosure – it also did not say expressly how the United States knew what one Syrian official had allegedly said to another.
Mindful of public opinion, Kerry urged Americans to read the four-page assessment for themselves. He referred to Iraq – when Bush administration assurances that weapons of mass destruction were present proved false, and a U.S. invasion led to a long, deadly war. Kerry said this time it will be different, and that “we will not repeat that moment.”
Citing an imperative to act, the secretary of state said “it is directly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the United States when it says something. They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it because then maybe they, too, can put the world at greater risk.”
While Obama was having trouble enlisting foreign support, French President Francois Hollande was an exception. The two men spoke by phone, then Hollande issued a statement saying they had “agreed that the international community cannot tolerate the use of chemical weapons, that it must hold the Syrian regime responsible and send a strong message to denounce the use of (such) arms.”
Obama has long been wary of U.S. military involvement in Syria’s civil war, as he has been with tumultuous events elsewhere during the so-called Arab Spring. In the case of Syria, his reluctance stems in part from recognition that while Assad has ties to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the rebels seeking to topple him have connections with al-Qaida-linked groups.
Still, Obama declared more than a year ago that the use of chemical weapons would amount to a “red line” that Assad should not cross. And Obama approved the shipment of small weapons and ammunition to the Syrian rebels after an earlier reported chemical weapons attack, although there is no sign the equipment has arrived.
___
Associated Press writer Yasmine Saker contributed to this report.
Related on HuffPost:
Rachel Maddow reviews the growing acceptance of equal marriage rights across America, even among Republicans.
A U.S. soldier cuts into a cake during Fourth of July celebrations at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul July 4, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is considering leaving no American troops behind in Afghanistan after the planned 2014 withdrawal date, U.S. officials said on Monday, amid ongoing tensions between the President Barack Obama’s administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government.
Obama is committed to wrapping up U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the United States has been talking with officials in Afghanistan about keeping a small residual force there of perhaps 8,000 troops after next year.
U.S. officials did not deny a report in the New York Times that Obama has become increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Karzai, with their fraying relationship falling to new depths after last month’s U.S. move to open peace talks with the Taliban.
A June 27 video conference between Obama and Karzai aimed at lowering tensions ended poorly, the Times reported on its website, citing U.S. and Afghan officials with knowledge of the conversation.
The Times reported that Karzai accused the United States of trying to forge a separate peace with the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters in an arrangement that would expose Karzai’s government to its enemies.
Since the video conference, a full military pullout from Afghanistan like the one from Iraq has been transformed from a “worst-case scenario” to an option “under serious consideration in Washington and Kabul,” the Times reported.
U.S. officials, asked about the report, pointed reporters to a comment by Ben Rhodes, the deputy White House national security adviser, who said in January that the “zero option” of leaving no troops behind is “an option that we would consider.” The comment still stands, officials said.
Asked about the Times report, one senior Obama administration official said: “All options remain on the table but a decision is far from made.”
The officials quoted by the Times said no decisions have been made on the pace and scale of the withdrawal.
The United States also had considered keeping a small force in Iraq after the broad troop withdrawal from that country, but talks with Iraqi leaders failed to yield such a deal.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” the Times quoted a senior Western official in Kabul as saying. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”
More than a dozen American troops were killed in Afghanistan last month.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan — now around 63,000 — already is set to decline to 34,000 by next February, the Times noted. The White House has said the great majority of American forces would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan since 2001. The United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the country’s Taliban rulers who had harbored the al Qaeda network responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States weeks earlier.
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Phil Stewart and Steve Holland; Editing by Eric Walsh and Will Dunham)
JAY CARNEY: “I think as I just said, when it comes to our relations with Hong Kong and China that we see this as a setback in terms of their efforts to build, the Chinese, their efforts to build mutual trust. And our concerns, I think, are pretty clearly stated.”
Courtesy of CSPAN
Republican strategist Karl Rove took a big swipe back at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday, a day after Palin mocked him during a rousing speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In a nod to Palin’s suggestion on Saturday that consultants like Rove should “buck up” and run for office, Rove shot back at Palin and said that if he were elected, he would serve out a full term. Palin, of course, resigned from office as Alaska’s governor mid-term in 2009, shortly after her failed vice presidential run.
“I appreciate her encouragement that I ought to go home to Texas and run for office,” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I would be enthused if I ran for office to have her support. Though I don’t think I’m a particularly good candidate — sort of a balding fat guy. Second of all, if I did run for office and win, I would serve out my term and I wouldn’t leave office midterm.”
Rove has riled conservatives in recent months with the formation of a new Super PAC designed to weed out primary candidates that it views as unelectable.
“If these experts keep losing elections, keep raking in millions, if they feel that strongly about who should run in this party they should buck up and run or stay in the truck,” Palin said on Saturday. “The architects can head on back to the Lone Star State and put their name on the ballot.”
But Rove suggested that Palin should agree with the premise of his new Super PAC, considering how she urged Todd Akin to get out of the Missouri Senate race after his controversial comments on rape and pregnancy.
Watch the clip below, via Mediaite:
