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Secessionist Sarah: Fringe Rightist Group Claims Palin Was Member in 90s
Submitted by Sam Durso on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 11:33pm.
Yup. The hits just keep on coming, as we find out more of what John McCain should already have known about his apparently un-vetted or poorly-vetted Far Right-Wing running mate.
What we're really finding out, of course, is what poor judgement McCain has, and what a dangerously impulsive president he would be.
Here ABC News' Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper (whose name makes him sound like a character in a novel, btw) reports that the fringe Right Wing Alaska Independence Party, whose members' famously advocate the state's seceding from the U.S., claim Sarah Palin was a member right up until quitting to run for Mayor of Wasilla in 1996.
Giving the members' claims credibility is a video attached to the story, which Palin recorded for the 2008 (!) Alaska Independence Party convention.
For more on AIP's conspiratorial agenda, including plots to infiltrate the major parties and associating itself with the Right-Wing wacko Free State Project, check out Liz Arnett's extensive post on Daily Kos.
It's Palin's fault that she's a Right-Wing nut, but it's not her fault that she's the Republican Party's Vice Presidential nominee.
The real fault is only McCain's.
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Didn't we fight a civil war on this issue?
And isn't that relevant to the qualification of the Vice Presidential nominee of the Republican party?
The Alaskan Independence Party was a strong movement when I lived in Alaska in the 1980s. It was not a joke by any means. The people in it were pretty serious.
Yesterday, at lunch with
Yesterday, at lunch with some colleagues (many of whom are GOPers), I said, "gee, I seem to remember a state called South Carolina who tried to leave the union. That didn't work out to well. We fought a war over it!"
The comment didn't go over all that well. It was funnier in my head.
This bears repeating, no matter the venue
because there's no way of massaging it into anything other than what it is.
The most famous quote by Joe Vogler, the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party:
These are not the words of a preacher at a church, where you might like the religion but disagree with the politics.
This is the politics of a party that you join because you share the politics. Todd Palin was a member until 2002, when Sarah started contemplating running for statewide office as a Republican.
We generally hear such rhetoric, in the Lower 48, only from militia.
Sarah Palin's an extremist who is truly to the right of Dick Cheney. She may be able to give a good speech tonight -- she was a tv talking head after all-- but her positions and her past will dog her, and hopefully will help drag down the McCain campaign.
Again, let's do the thought
Again, let's do the thought experiment.
Suppose Barack or Michelle Obama once belonged to a movement advocating separation from the United States.
Suppose their preacher said "that terrorist murders of Jews represent God's judgment against Jews for resisting Jesus."
Suppose they had a seventeen year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant.
Suppose there had been the same patterns of reversals and cover-ups, personal vendettas, and admissions of lack of knowledge or interest in the key issues of the election.
Obama wouldn't even be Jesse Jackson in 1984, post "Hymietown." He'd be toast. And nobody would be advocating any kind of restraint.
--Tim
Why restraint might be called for
Apparently, she may not have been a member of AIP even though the accusation was being thrown around. If she really was an advocate of Alaska's succession - for which there is no evidence - lacking restraint and making false accusations lessens the validity of holding her accountable .
But even more than that, the guilt by association between Wright and Obama was ridiculous because it is obvious that Obama would never advocate policies that would reflect Wright's more extreme rhetoric. It was baseless, gutter politics in a pure form. Why is guilt by association between Palin and some lunatic any more valid. Do you seriously believe that there's any danger in her advocating for Alaska's succession as VP?
He who lays down with dogs.....
She sent a video message to an AIP convention
Isn't that more than guilt by association?
Her husband was a member of the party. It is not clear that she was. All that's clear is that, in the absence of hard evidence, a party official has reversed course about her membership, no doubt after someone pointed out that while the AIP is a pretty mainstream institution in Alaska, it's message is not mainstream outside.
That's silly, Josh
Under what non-political pretense does one join a non-traditional political party?
Are there Libertarians out there who don't want to gut Government spending?
Are there Socialists out there who don't want to increase it?
The Alaskan Independence Party is what it is...known for advocating, um, Alaskan Independence.
Barack Obama could not get away with being a member of a party that advocated Hawaiian Independence; he could never survive Michelle's being a member of a party that advocated African-American separatism.
Pointing out double standards when we catch them is critical to eradicating double standards. The difference here likely can be attributed to both race and politics. Obama attests in Dreams of My Father a truth that is obvious to African-Americans but ignored by most whites: that African-Americans in public life must appear less threatening in all they do than whites.
And, less relevantly perhaps, the fringe right gets cut way bigger breaks than than does the fringe left, even though they blew up a Federal building in Oklahoma City far more recently than anything the Weather Underground tried.
And, for the record, if Obama did belong to -- or curry favor with -- a political party that disdains the Federal Government the way the Alaskan Independence Party does, I for one would have been less inclined to support him in the primary.
No, Palin does not deserve a break for hanging out with, and sending videos to, the Alaskan Independence Party, whether you want to quote Vogler or not.
He who rolls over like a dog is useless in a political fight.
Which is what we've got here, with the foulest-fighting wing of an already foul-fighting party.
Palin's speech
While I (obviously) haven't seen Palin's speech tonight, I did see a video of a speech which she gave at her church in Wasilla this past summer. Frankly, she comes off as something of an idiot. A perfect complement to McSame, dontcha think?
-Z
Lover 48? No, Outside
Alaska's political culture is, from the perspective of the lower 48, very odd. It is in fact quite interesting and, at least when I lived there, in some ways attractive.
I used to joke that it was a libertarian Rousseauian community which, while a contradiction in some ways, made sense up there.
People were fervently devoted to individual freedom. While I was there, recreational use of pot was legal have been declared legal under the right of privacy by the Alaskan Supreme Court. (Footnote, the Chief Justice of the court, Jay Rabinowitz, roomed with my Dad at Harvard Law School.)
Yet people were also dedicated to their community and Alaska. And they were heavily involved in politics which was encouraged by the high legislator to Alaskan ration. There were about 5000 adults in each State House district when I lived there and I met three state legislators my first week in the state. During a Gubenatorial primary--which attracted a lot of candidates in part because it was funded by Alaska's superb system of public financing--it was almost impossible to get away from the race. For the first time as a teacher I had to close my office door, not to avoid students, but to avoid one of the 14 Gubenatorial candidates who would drop in every day and thought I had nothing better to than chat with them for an hour.
The seeming contradiction is resolved when you recognize that, first, Alaska probably had the highest number of people working in the public sector in the country, and second, that under the harsh conditions of Alaskan life in Winter, you couldn't live without counting on friends, neighbors and government. I once got stuck in a snow bank and four people stopped to help me. At 40 below, getting stuck in the snow is a life and death issue.
I almost never heard anyone use the term Lower 48. The term was "outside" and that included not just New York and LA but Tokyo, Moscow and Timbuktu. All were equally foreign to Alaskans. That should tell you something about why the AIP was mainstream there.
When I was in Alaska, evangelical politics was just beginning. It's sad to see that the good libertarian instincts of the Alaskans I knew have been so strongly challenged by people like Palin, who want to ban books and teach creationism.