Palin: Citizen Letter Blasting Permanent Political Class 'Rings True'

On Wednesday, former Gov. Sarah Palin used an appearance by Democrat Anthony Weiner on Fox News’s Hannity and a letter written by a 79-year old American dying of cancer to his Washington senators to assail Washington’s permanent political class. 

Palin first expressed disbelief that liberals and the mainstream press propped up someone like Weiner while he was ambitiously rising up the ranks in Congress: 

Really, liberals, to think you supported this fine gent in Congress all those years with minions in the media propping him up? Hmmmmmm. I hope Weiner continues to be a spokesman for the liberal cause because his position pretty much says it all.

She then used Weiner’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s show to make a broader point about why Americans hate politicians so much: 

Just as interesting juxtaposition to show what average Americans think of members of Congress like Anthony Weiner and the permanent political class in D.C., I’m pasting below a letter that was posted online in various forums. It was apparently sent by a gentlemen in Washington state to his senators. I don’t know this gentleman and can’t verify the authenticity of the letter, but its words ring true with the sound wisdom of We the People.

Palin pasted a letter from Billy Schoonover, a 79-year old American who is dying of cancer who wrote to Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in April of 2013. The letter’s authenticity appears to have been verified. 

The letter blasts Congress for becoming “America’s answer to the Saudi royal family” and rips President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for wasting taxpayer dollars on lavish vacations. 

“You have become the ‘perfumed princes and princesses’ of our country,” the letter says. He then ripped Congress for not listening to Americans and passing Obamacare against their will:

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. “Obama Care,” a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it, substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know – (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called “safety net” has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps – pretty much all Democratic voters – and the program is absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight.

The letter then blasts Washington’s permanent political class for betraying America’s struggling middle class:

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

[…]

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me “You’ll just have to take a pill,” while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator, while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

In his letter, Schoonover wrote that though the chances of his senators reading his letter were “practically zero,” he was hoping this “letter will, however, go online where many others will have the chance to read one person’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.”