Washington, February 07: Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has sharply criticized US President Barack Obama over his national security policies.
Speaking at a national convention of the “Tea Party” movement Saturday night, Palin slammed the first African American president of the US for his handling of the so-called war on terror.
She said that the Obama administration does not seem to understand the war on terror in the way it handled the recent attempt to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.
Targeting the Democratic president, Palin boasted that it is time America had a commander in chief, not a professor at a lectern.
Observers have described Palin as political novice who is gravely illiterate in international politics but very good at reading pre-rehearsed speeches, filled with negative rhetoric, aimed at mocking the political opposition.
On economic recession, the Republican John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election described Obama’s proposed 2011 budget as ‘immoral’ for increasing the national debt, reiterating that the nation is drowning in debt.
The convention in Nashville brought together hundreds of activists from the Tea Party group, which hopes to make a splash in the 2010 congressional elections and beyond.
All 435 seats of the House of Representatives and more than a third of the 100 Senate seats are up for grabs next November. Democrats currently hold the majority in both houses.
The movement takes its name from the historic protest against British taxation, the Boston Tea Party, one of the triggers of the American Revolution against the British colonial rule.
“This is the movement and America is ready for another revolution and you are a part of this,” boasted Palin.
McCain and Palin lost heavily to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, leaving the Grand Old Party floundering and leaderless. Palin was blamed by many Republicans for the landslide defeat of the Republican ticket due to her ignorance of international and current affairs.
Amid speculations that Palin might make a bid for presidency in 2012, she brushed aside her own political ambitions saying that everyone had a role to play.
“You don’t need a proclaimed leader as if we are all a bunch of sheep and looking for a leader to progress this movement,” she said.
Recent reports indicate that Palin received advice from her husband, a fisherman, in governing the State of Alaska.
—–Agencies