Sarah Palin urged Republicans to throw caution to the wind in the aftermath of Tuesday's midterm elections, calling GOP strategist Ed Gillespie's suggestion that party leaders take a "serious" and careful approach to their likely new mandate "out of touch."
On Tuesday morning, Gillespie advised Republicans not to pursue exhaustive initiatives such as a complete repeal of the health care overhaul, but rather hone their ambitions on the law's most contentious aspects. Palin, however, seemed to think that this was an awful idea, and painted impending Republican victories as a referendum on a piece of legislation that nobody wanted in the first place.
"No, no, no, see how out of touch even a comment, an idea like that is? No, what Americans are saying is, Obamacare, for instance, the mother of all unfunded mandates -- we didn't want it to start with, we knew we couldn't afford it. Nobody ever would explain how in the world we were gonna pay for this $3 trillion boondoggle when there are better, more sensible reforms for health care that, of course can be provided the problem and we can find some solutions that way," Palin said on Laura Ingraham's radio show Tuesday afternoon. "But instead no, now people are talking about already, 'well, let's just compromise on some of it, and some provisions can be repealed or reformed.' No! Repeal the whole thing, replace it with market based, free-market based, patient-centered reform that Republicans tried to get Obama to listen to."
Palin continued with a degree of animus that has underscored her recent and ongoing feud with establishment Republicans.
"Anyone in the GOP who thinks they can cut a little deal here, there with Obama or Pelosi, to maybe raise taxes -- tax here, or -- they're going to find themselves without a job in 2012. We gotta remind these folks in the next couple of years: we put you in, we can take you out, and that's the other message of this election," Palin said. "We the people, we're gonna be in control and we're not sheep and they can't railroad us anymore, and, you know, we are their bosses. And the GOP has to understand that -- the machine has to understand that -- we're not sending Republicans, commonsense conservatives, to Washington to sing Kumbaya with Obama, we're sending them to stop Obama."
Watch a compilation of the statements, from ThinkProgress: