Politics & Power Quote by Carl Paladino

Paladino’s line isn’t really about “the media” or even “the party.” It’s a populist sorting mechanism: a way to divide the world into the awake and the duped, the real people and the institutional insiders. The repeated “in denial” does heavy lifting here. It frames disagreement not as a legitimate difference in priorities, but as a psychological refusal to face obvious reality. That move is useful because it makes his own position feel like common sense rather than ideology.

The target list is telling. “Media” and “party regulars” are paired as twin gatekeepers, suggesting a closed loop of elites who talk to each other, protect each other, and miss what’s happening outside the room. That’s a classic outsider pitch from an insider-adjacent figure: you get to run for office while insisting the system is rigged against you. The subtext is: trust me because I’m not them.

Then comes the fuzzier but more potent phrase: “not what the people want.” It’s intentionally nonspecific, allowing listeners to project their own grievances onto “the government we have today” - taxes, cultural change, perceived corruption, economic anxiety. The rhetoric works because it turns a complicated policy argument into a legitimacy crisis. If government isn’t what “the people” want, the problem isn’t a bill or a budget line; it’s the entire governing class.

Contextually, this fits the late-2000s/early-2010s insurgent mood in Republican politics, when anti-establishment energy (Tea Party-style) treated institutions as suspect and anger as proof of authenticity. The point isn’t to persuade opponents; it’s to validate a base’s sense of betrayal and recruit everyone else into that feeling.