The Palin Controversies Keep Coming

[phk]

The Palin Controversies Keep Coming -- She Was Member Of Pro-Secession Alaska Party
Posted by Ashish on 09.01.2008

Palin was a member of a Alaskan party that pushed for Alaska to secede from U.S.

ABC News is reporting that Sarah Palin and her husband were members of the Alaskan Independence Party as recently as 1994 and that she took part in the party's convention THIS YEAR (video below). This is a party that has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of Alaska can secede from the United States. Their party motto is "Alaska First -- Alaska Always," a direct contrast to McCain's campaign motto of "Country First." Most of the people in the party want Alaska to secede from the United States, though the official line from the party is that they just want Alaskans to be allowed to vote on whether to stay in the U.S. or to secede.

AIP Chairman Lynette Clark says that both Palin and her husband were members in 1994 and that both attended the party's 1994 statewide convention. Clark says that the main goal of the party is to challenge the legality of Alaska's statehood. Clark adds that Palin switched to the Republican party in 1996 when she decided to run for Mayor of Wasilla.

Below is a video of Palin addressing the AIP convention earlier THIS YEAR. And at that convention, AIP Vice Chair George Clark said that Palin "was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town" and that she remains "pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."

I think Josh Marshall makes a very good point. Whether these stories really matter in the longterm or not isn't the issue. The issue here is that John McCain, after meeting this woman only once and not even vetting her properly, has put her in position to perhaps be the next Vice President, and by extension, President, of the United States.

[cinyc]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

what DUI leak?

[Torie]

This one is harder to minimize. Is there a link to this?

[Alcon]

The AIP is a SPINO (secessionist party in name only).  Don't make me sic Lewis on your ass.

[Daniel Adams]

Yeah, but how important is secession really to the AIP? To me they seem more like a right-libertarian party. In any case, note Palin faced an AIP opponent in 2006...

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

What DUI leak?

[Alcon]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

What DUI leak?

Todd Palin was arrested for DUI...

...

...when he was twenty-two years old.

[Meeker]

The AIP is a SPINO (secessionist party in name only).  Don't make me sic Lewis on your ass.

^^^

I've had to explain this to half a dozen people thus far today, it's getting annoying...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

What DUI leak?

Todd Palin was arrested for DUI...

...

...when he was twenty-two years old.

How old was Bush when his happened?

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

What DUI leak?

Todd Palin was arrested for DUI...

...

...when he was twenty-two years old.

Oh, I thought it referred to Sarah.  Got it now.

[Torie]

The AIP is a SPINO (secessionist party in name only).  Don't make me sic Lewis on your ass.

^^^

I've had to explain this to half a dozen people thus far today, it's getting annoying...

I am worth a 7th time aren't I? 

[Person Man]

Again. I want to have a fair debate with this woman, but it appears that she, herself, is simply smoke and mirrors. A nationalist fundamentalist who cannot control her own home and has conspired against America? What am I supposed to think?

[Dan the Roman]

Most of these scandals don't matter. What matters is that Palin is suffering from the same sort of scandal of the hour syndrome that George Allen fell victim to, which means the very existence of scandal encourages the media to dig for more "scandalous" stories regardless of whether they matter or not. In turn, most Americans will simply note that she had another scandal without analyzing it because its what they have been led to expect from her. This is really bad, and its hard to break this narrative once it has you. Its one reason why I don't think she will last. After today, even the most minor thing will be blown all out of proportion.

[Daniel Adams]

Again. I want to have a fair debate with this woman, but it appears that she, herself, is simply smoke and mirrors. A nationalist fundamentalist who cannot control her own home and has conspired against America? What am I supposed to think?

Stop jumping to conclusions and actually look at the facts. Every smear you leftists have tried to throw at Palin thus far has failed.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Most of these scandals don't matter. What matters is that Palin is suffering from the same sort of scandal of the hour syndrome that George Allen fell victim to, which means the very existence of scandal encourages the media to dig for more "scandalous" stories regardless of whether they matter or not. In turn, most Americans will simply note that she had another scandal without analyzing it because its what they have been led to expect from her. This is really bad, and its hard to break this narrative once it has you. Its one reason why I don't think she will last. After today, even the most minor thing will be blown all out of proportion.

True. How many threads about her compared to threads about Biden?

[Meeker]

The AIP is a SPINO (secessionist party in name only).  Don't make me sic Lewis on your ass.

^^^

I've had to explain this to half a dozen people thus far today, it's getting annoying...

I am worth a 7th time aren't I? 

They include a vote on secession in their platform, and favored it heavily years ago. There might be a few hardcore secessionists left, but now-a-days it's basically a very conservative/libertarian party that hates the federal government. Think of them as the Constitution Party (in fact they've endorsed the Constitution Party candidate this year and in 2004).

[angus]

I still don't get why folks think the McCain campaign didn't vet Governor Palin.  The Washington Post says that they did.

The DUI leak clearly came from the campaign, and there's no reason to believe that the campaign didn't know about Bristol's pregnancy.  What better day to dump all the bad news than on a Labor Day when everyone else is concerned about Hurricane Gustav?

what DUI leak?

you know, the one when she was 24 and on her way to a scat party.  She was supposed to jump out of a cake naked, then crawl on the lap of a rich emir from the United Arab Emirates and let him give her rim as she shat upon his lips.  He'd paid good money, and President Reagan was counting on her because if things went well he was going to ask if he could surreptitiously park a few missles in some secret corner of his desert, so she didn't want to let him down.  But up to that point she had only given golden showers for pay, and never scatological favors, so she had to get up the nerve to do it right.  She had a drink or two or seven on the way over, and that, combined with all the blow she had been doing at the time, made her a little light-headed so she was weaving in and out of traffic and driving about a hundred twenty miles per hour.  A cop pulled her over and asked her to get out of the car.  So she offered him a long slow oral favor if he'd let her off with a warning, but apparently he was a real boy scout and wouldn't go for it.  She ended up getting charged with attempted bribery as well as DUI.  Good thing she was on Reagan's payroll, so she could cover it up long enough to get elected mayor and then governor some day.  I guess the secret's out now.  The cop must have finally blabbed to Howard Dean.  Can't keep such secrets forever, you know.

I think she may also be Hitler's love child.  You know, twenty years after he escaped that bunker and took up residence in a mountain hideout in Idaho.  Her real mother, Eva Braun, put her up for adoption but the Democrats are hot on the paper trail and I think they'll break that story soon, so be prepared.

[Person Man]

Again. I want to have a fair debate with this woman, but it appears that she, herself, is simply smoke and mirrors. A nationalist fundamentalist who cannot control her own home and has conspired against America? What am I supposed to think?

Stop jumping to conclusions and actually look at the facts. Every smear you leftists have tried to throw at Palin thus far has failed.

Says who? Can you explain every scandal? How are we supposed to react?

[Dan the Roman]

Most of these scandals don't matter. What matters is that Palin is suffering from the same sort of scandal of the hour syndrome that George Allen fell victim to, which means the very existence of scandal encourages the media to dig for more "scandalous" stories regardless of whether they matter or not. In turn, most Americans will simply note that she had another scandal without analyzing it because its what they have been led to expect from her. This is really bad, and its hard to break this narrative once it has you. Its one reason why I don't think she will last. After today, even the most minor thing will be blown all out of proportion.

True. How many threads about her compared to threads about Biden?

Palin was an attention grabbing pick. That worked both in favor of the McCain campaign(by distracting attention from Obama's speech) and against it(by making Palin the issue). What determines whether or not this was smart will be whether that increased attention is positive or not.

Palin(and McCain's) problem is that the determination of that is not really under their control. No one believed Biden had any scandals that had not come out yet, so the national media did not descend on Delaware after he was picked. A couple bad stories got leaked about Palin, and the media descended on Alaska. Its now come out that the reason the Bristol story was released had nothing to do with DailyKos and everything to do with the fact that the National Enquirer was about to break it. The problem for Palin is every story the media digs up convinces the diggers that there is more to find.

[Daniel Adams]

Again. I want to have a fair debate with this woman, but it appears that she, herself, is simply smoke and mirrors. A nationalist fundamentalist who cannot control her own home and has conspired against America? What am I supposed to think?

Stop jumping to conclusions and actually look at the facts. Every smear you leftists have tried to throw at Palin thus far has failed.

Says who? Can you explain every scandal? How are we supposed to react?

You're supposed to react by looking at the facts rather than blindly accepting everything you read at the DailyKos.

* Attack No. 1: Palin's an extremist creationist. Fact was, her statement was that debate on evolution should not be supressed, but did not say creationism should be actively taught. Her position is no different from mainstream conservatism.

* Attack No. 2: Palin supported Pat Buchanan. She actually supported Steve Forbes in both 1996 and 2000. She just appeared at a Buchanan fundraiser, probably to build connections in Alaskan politics since he didn't even donate to Buchanan.

* Attack No. 3: Her kid with Down Syndrome was actually her daughter's. Well, this has been debunked already with the revelation that Bristol is pregnant with her old child, but even without knowing that the evidence was very flimsy. There were several pictures of Palin pregnant with Trig, plus teenage moms almost never have kids with Down.

*Attack No. 4: She was a member secessionist party! The AIS' secessionism is in name only and they're actually right-libertarian, in line with most of Palin's beliefs. And they even run an candidate against her in 2006.

There have been more attacks; I don't have the time or will to dig them up. But you should get the picture by now.

[Sam Spade]

Death by the perception of scandals would work if the perception of scandals among the mainstream populace actually existed.

Sometimes we get lost in the echo chamber.

[Brittain33]

Death by the perception of scandals would work if the perception of scandals among the mainstream populace actually existed.

Sometimes we get lost in the echo chamber.

I called my low-information, often-irrational-voter mother (Dole-Gore-Bush-[leaning McCain, NOT Obama]) and she described Palin with an expletive that I'm not going to write here in a post with her name on it. She's moved from McCain to sitting out the election. The "ladies" in her active adult community, to use the term she used, think Palin's a joke. To be fair, this is a population in a part of the country where McCain doesn't need to win, but he would like to have the votes of their older sisters and mothers in Florida.

[Person Man]

Again. I want to have a fair debate with this woman, but it appears that she, herself, is simply smoke and mirrors. A nationalist fundamentalist who cannot control her own home and has conspired against America? What am I supposed to think?

Stop jumping to conclusions and actually look at the facts. Every smear you leftists have tried to throw at Palin thus far has failed.

Says who? Can you explain every scandal? How are we supposed to react?

You're supposed to react by looking at the facts rather than blindly accepting everything you read at the DailyKos.

* Attack No. 1: Palin's an extremist creationist. Fact was, her statement was that debate on evolution should not be supressed, but did not say creationism should be actively taught. Her position is no different from mainstream conservatism.

* Attack No. 2: Palin supported Pat Buchanan. She actually supported Steve Forbes in both 1996 and 2000. She just appeared at a Buchanan fundraiser, probably to build connections in Alaskan politics since he didn't even donate to Buchanan.

* Attack No. 3: Her kid with Down Syndrome was actually her daughter's. Well, this has been debunked already with the revelation that Bristol is pregnant with her old child, but even without knowing that the evidence was very flimsy. There were several pictures of Palin pregnant with Trig, plus teenage moms almost never have kids with Down.

*Attack No. 4: She was a member secessionist party! The AIS' secessionism is in name only and they're actually right-libertarian, in line with most of Palin's beliefs. And they even run an candidate against her in 2006.

There have been more attacks; I don't have the time or will to dig them up. But you should get the picture by now.

I'll let her go on 3. ...but I don't buy the explainations for 4.  Things look a little weird for 1 and 2, as well.

[Sam Spade]

Death by the perception of scandals would work if the perception of scandals among the mainstream populace actually existed.

Sometimes we get lost in the echo chamber.

I called my low-information, often-irrational-voter mother (Dole-Gore-Bush-[leaning McCain, NOT Obama]) and she described Palin with an expletive that I'm not going to write here in a post with her name on it. She's moved from McCain to sitting out the election. The "ladies" in her active adult community, to use the term she used, think Palin's a joke. To be fair, this is a population in a part of the country where McCain doesn't need to win, but he would like to have the votes of their older sisters and mothers in Florida.

Interesting.  What's the rationale, presuming there is one, other then her being a joke?