Union Maid

No sooner had we issued our editorial “Jimmy Hoffa’s War” than a wire came in from one of Sarah Palin’s most assiduous supporters, Benyamin Korn, with a copy of her Labor Day posting on Facebook. Our editorial had wondered where the original Jimmy Hoffa would have been today. It remarked on the phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats, who comprehended that the true interests of working men and women in America lay with the idea of economic growth. And it remarked on the need for someone who makes this point today. Well, Mrs. Palin's riposte is a humdinger.

It turns out that Mrs. Mrs. Palin understands this issue down to the ground. She brings to it the perspective of being the daughter of two union members and the wife of long-time union member, most recently of the Steelworkers, and is, in her own right, a one-time card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Addressing what she called “the hard working, patriotic, selfless union brothers and sisters in Michigan and throughout our country,” she warned the rank and file against being taken in by “union bosses’ thuggery.”

She was referring to Mr. Hoffa’s deciding to introduce Mr. Obama at the now famous labor rally in Detroit by declaring that labor was his army and ready to march and exhorting, in respect of the Tea Party, “let’s take these sons of bitches out.” Said she: “Just because you claim to represent union members doesn’t mean you are on the side of the angels. The greed of too many of these union bosses has all but destroyed the labor movement in this country, helped chase away our jobs, and is killing the American dream.”

Quoth the Alert Alaskan: “To see where this leads, look at what’s happening to the working class in our industrialized cities. These cities are going to hell in a hand basket thanks to corruption, crony capitalism, and the union bosses’ greed. The union bosses derive their power from your union dues and their promise to deliver your votes to whichever politician they’re in bed with. They get their power from you, and yet their actions ultimately hurt you. They’re chasing American industry offshore by making outrageous, economically illogical demands that they know will never work. . . .”

“Union bosses,” she added, “will still figure out a way to keep their gig, and so will their politically aligned corporate friends. As long as these big corporations have a good crony capitalist in the White House, they can rely on DC to bail them out until the whole system goes bankrupt, which, I am afraid, is not very far off. When big government, big business, and big union bosses collude together, they get government to maximize their own interests against those of the rest of the country. So, now these union bosses are desperately trying to cast the grassroots Tea Party Movement as being ‘against the workingman.’”

It is the Tea Party, Mrs. Palin asserted, that “represents the needed reform that will empower workers and job creators. We stand with the little guy against the corruption and influence peddling of those who collude to grease the wheels of government power. This collusion is at the heart of Obama’s economic vision for America. In practice it is socialism for the very rich and the very poor, but a brutal form of capitalism for the rest of us. It is socialism for the very poor who are reduced to a degrading perpetual dependence on a near-bankrupt centralized government to provide their every need . . .”

There’s more in Mrs. Palin’s full Facebook posting, and if it is a taste of a campaign ahead, the race will be richer for it. For where are the rest of the Republicans? The Drudge Report has been leading with the story all day. Aside from Drudge, Mrs. Palin was way ahead of the press. Where is the Republican presidential field? Some say that Mrs. Palin is just teasing the Republicans and that she won’t run in the end. But right now there is no one else coming at this issue from quite the angle she is — or with the plain spoken news sense.