Gov. Sarah Palin story of the day

The geniuses at HuffPo think they’ve caught Gov. Palin in her first “official” gaffe as John McCain’s veep nominee. It all stems around comments the Gov. made in response to what she said this weekend in Colorado Springs about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (via Memeo):

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, as McClatchy reported, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

“You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country’s mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn’t speak well for her, I’d say.”

Unfortunately for the clueless wonders at the HuffPo and their liberal cohorts elsewhere, Gov. Palin was right on target, as Kim Priestap carefully points out in a lengthy post here. Tom Maguire has a good post up on this non-gaffe as well. Former presidential contender Fred Thompson wrote a story about this for Townhall magazine, and it was published this morning before reports of Gov. Palin’s “gaffe” surfaced on HuffPo.

But hey – let’s say, just for laughs, that Gov. Palin really did mess up this past weekend with what she said about the FMs. She’s still got a long way to go to catch up with The One.

Related: Factcheck definitively debunks several false claims that have been made this past week about Gov. Palin’s record. They’re a little late to the ballgame, but their joining in the effort at keeping the left honest re: Gov. Palin is welcomed, nevertheless ;)

More: To get a good idea of how Gov. Palin conducts herself during a press interview, click here.

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