Sarah Palin on Ukraine: I Told You So

As top Ukrainian officials were accusing Russia of invading their country on Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin reminded the press that derided her has a neophyte during the 2008 presidential campaign that she had accurately predicted an Obama presidency could lead to Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country.

“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. Palin was resoundingly mocked by comedians like Tina Fey and eggheads for saying in 2008 that Alaska’s proximity to Russia forced her to deal with foreign policy issues just like George W. Bush said thatTexas’s proximity to Mexico compelled him to deal with Mexico when he was governor of Texas.

Palin linked to a Breitbart News article that pointed out that Blake Hounshell, the then-Foreign Policy magazine editor who is now an editor with Politico magazine, dismissed her comments as “strange.”

“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next,” Palin said on the stump in the 2008 campaign.

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin also reminded his listeners that Palin “knew what Putin would do to Ukraine with Obama as president.” 

Palin, as she wrote, rarely toots her own horn. In fact, she has frustrated many of her core supporters for not bragging about her considerable accomplishments, especially the reforms that both political parties hated, while she was Alaska’s governor.

But she may have made an exception on Friday because Tina Fey’s “I can see Russia from my House” line, which Palin herself never said, has been used to mock and deride her on the national stage. Even today, mainstream media reporters, Democrats, and establishment Republicans who have always been jealous of her appeal and influence mistake Fey’s words for Palin’s. 

Since Palin emerged on the national scene in 2008, the mainstream press have given her none of the benefit of the doubt they have always given to Barack Obama, who Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said was the most naive president on foreign policy issues during his lifetime.