The Moderate Voice asks, who exactly vetted Sarah Palin? And uncovers some oddities in her pro-life pregnancy story that are worthy of "Desperate Housewives..."
…the oldest girl is rumored to have actually been the one who had the last baby, the one with Down’s Syndrome. She was taken out of school the last 4 or 5 months of her mother’s pregnancy. On March 5th, 2008 Alaska’s Republican Governor, Sarah Palin, announced to the media that she was 7 months pregnant with her 5th child. She is currently 44. Palin’s daughter Bristol is 16 and attends an Anchorage high school. Students who have attended class with her report that she has been out of school for months, claiming a prolonged case of mono. Palin does not appear pregnant in any recent photographs. The announcement came as quite a shock to people who had worked closely with her, and have been quoted as saying that she did not appear pregnant whatsoever during the prior 7 months.
Those kinds of questions about Palin will likely be more interesting to the blogosphere than to voters, especially women voters, who won't cotton to personal attacks on the Alaska governor. But women will be interested in knowing more about Palin's beliefs, which are far to the right of most women Independents, whom McCain needs in November. Two from Tapped:
Chris Hayes has a great find: Very quickly. Remember when Pat Buchanan ran a number of hard-right, fringe campaigns for president in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000? Well, guess who was supporting him: From an AP report in 1999: "Pat Buchanan brought his conservative message of a smaller government and an America First foreign policy to Fairbanks and Wasilla on Friday as he continued a campaign swing through Alaska. Buchanan's strong message championing states rights resonated with the roughly 85 people gathered for an Interior Republican luncheon in Fairbanks. … Among those sporting Buchanan buttons were Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin and state Sen. Jerry Ward, R-Anchorage." And Palin's story about rejecting the "bridge to nowhere?" Not so much: It seems to be totally untrue that, as Sarah Palin claimed in her speech in Dayton earlier today, she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere." Rather, after federal funding was cut off, she decided not to replace it with state funds. There's no indication that she opposed the federal earmark. In fact, Palin supported the bridge, and pushed for Alaska's congressional delegation to get it done. From the New Republic:
Republicans have been heavily touting Sarah Palin's reformist credentials, with her supposed opposition to Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" as Exhibit A. But how hard did she really fight the project? Not very, it seems. Here's what she told the Anchorage Daily News on October 22, 2006, during the race for the governor's seat (via Nexis): 5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges? Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.
So she was very much for the bridge and insisted that Alaska had to act quickly—the party of Ted Stevens and Don Young might soon lose its majority, after all. By that point, the project was endangered for reasons that had nothing to do with Palin—the bridge had become a national laughingstock, Congress had stripped away the offending earmark, shifting the money back to the state's general fund, and future federal support seemed unlikely. And as for the quote that headlines this post? Politico explains (hat tip to The Moderate Voice): In an interview just a month ago, she dissed the job, saying it didn’t seem “productive.”
In fact, she said she didn’t know what the vice president does.
Larry Kudlow of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” asked her about the possibility of becoming McCain's ticket mate. Palin replied: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? In this campaign? She babysits the evangelical right. That's the principal reason for the Palin pick -- she'll pump up the old evangelical Bush base to work for McCain, something they wouldn't otherwise do. And she'll make die-hard PUMAs feel comfortable voting for McCain (despite both of their views.) The question is, do those constituencies add up to 50 percent. Signs point to no, but we'll see.
| Labels: 2008 election, John McCain, presidential candidates, Sarah Palin |
