The More We Learn About Sarah Palin…

The scarier she becomes. Forget for a second her extreme lack of experience and instead focus on her positions and her history. Sarah Palin is a “wingnut” - an extreme far right wing politician who will appeal to no one but the Pat Robertson wing of the Republican party when her positions and her history become more well known.

Sarah Palin Facts

+ The car wash that Palin and her husband ran was shut down last year due to failing to comply with state regulations. How’s that for “executive experience” ? She couldn’t even run a car wash without it getting shut down.

+ She has belonged to an extremist church for most of her life whose pastor said in 2004 that anyone who criticizes George W. Bush will be sent to hell.

+ Palin was for “the bridge to nowhere” before she was against it. She lied about this in her VP acceptance speech last Friday. Will she lie about it again tonight?

+ She is anti-choice even in cases of incest & rape.

+ As mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska; Palin asked a librarian about how she could go about having books at the library burned. When the librarian didn’t cooperate she threatened to have her fired. An early example of Palin willingness to abuse her power. Troopergate is a current example of that Dick Cheny-esque abuse of power mentality that Sarah Palin has.

+ Sarah Palin didn’t get a passport until 2007. An actual GOP talking point is that she has “foreign policy experience” because Alaska is the state closest to Russia. I suppose by that logic she also has “space experience” because Alaska’s Mount McKinley is the highest point in America.

+ Palin sought many millions of dollars worth of earmarks as Mayor of Wasilla and as Governor of Alaska. John McCain himself objected to some of those earmarks. Is this the kind of “reform” that McCain is talking about?

+ She uses the phrase “God’s Will” to explain the war in Iraq and the Alaskan Pipeline which is very reminiscent of our current President, George W. Bush.

John McCain’s Judgment

Perhaps the most important thing about Sarah Palin is what it says about McCain’s lack of judgment. While his campaign is trying to spin the Palin choice as an example of him being a “Maverick” the truth is it shows that McCain bent over backwards for the far right wing religious wackos that make up the base of the Republican party.

All indications are that McCain wanted to choose his close friend Joe Lieberman as his VP but that choice was “vetoed” by the far right of his party. So McCain chose Palin to placate the far right wing and as a cynical political ploy so he could pretend to be about “change.”

In doing so McCain destroyed his strongest arguments against Barack Obama about “experience” and “ready to lead.” Those arguments are now laughable with the completely unqualified Sarah Palin as his VP. Nobody in their right mind believes that Palin is ready to be President nor that she should be one 72 year old heartbeat away from the Presidency.

It’s becoming clear that McCain didn’t think very long and hard about his choice of Palin, they did not do the proper research into her background. Is this the sort of rash decision McCain would make as President? Is this the sort of choice that comes from all of those years of experience that McCain has? Read the NY Times story on Palin and McCain’s poor judgment.

2008, NY Times, Sarah Palin, Vice President