;)
Your comment (to my previous post, saying that Palin was more or less correct): Sorry, that was not the purpose of "Paul Revere's ride". He did not set out to get captured by the British so that he could feed them false information. Sure, he tried to brass it out after he was caught, but that was not the purpose of the ride. Are you really suggesting that getting caught was part of his plan? There's no getting around the fact that Palin misspoke on this. His purpose was to warn the colonists of the approach of the British. Again, it is not a huge gaffe, but in today's media, everything a conservative says "can and will be used against them". It's certainly no worse than Obama's and Gore's many gaffes; but we know they get a free pass.
While Palin spoke less smoothly than I would have liked, she doesn't say that warning the Redcoats was the primary purpose of Revere's ride. What she said was accurate - it is one of the things he did on his ride, and potentially a major one. How would that day have turned out if the Redcoats had continued at maximum speed toward Lexington and Concord? As it happened, the regulars proceeded more cautiously, knowing with greater certainty that the militias had been alerted, but the militias were still outnumbered when the regulars arrived at Lexington - our people had to withdraw. It wasn't until the regulars arrived at Concord that the militia had enough troops to route the Redcoats. While alerting the Regulars was not Revere's plan, he did warn them, and that may have been a significant factor in the outcome of the events. His ride was also to protect the right of the colonists to keep and bear arms, a factor that Palin drew attention to despite history teachers often neglecting that aspect of the ride.
;)
It really comes down to a rather clumsy choice of words on Palin's part. I agree that what she spoke was not an untruth. However, the way she said it makes it sound to most people that Palin believed the purpose of the ride was to warn the British. You and I can probably understand what she meant, but a hostile media and an idiot populace cannot. Palin really needs to be careful in cases like this. A little thought would have produced a comment like "when Paul revere was out there warnin' the colonists that the British were coming and ringin' those bells, he also sent a tacit warning to the British that 'we're armed and we're waitin' for ya'".
At the end of the day, we are arguing about this on FR, while most of the American people who heard about this think it is another gaffe from Palin and that she is not well briefed about what she talks about. I'm sure this will be a new Tina Fey line if Palin does run.