Election Eve Eve Fun

Palin as president.

Sarah Palin's Bad Halloween Joke

It was a joke, right? This governor of an American state - and candidate for federal office - didn't just seriously say that the press is threatening her First Amendment rights by criticizing her? She's talking about the same First Amendment that promises that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ..." Is this what a McCain/Palin administration would be like? I don't like all of Barack Obama's positions, but at least he knows what the Constitution says (he was a professor of Constitutional law, after all).

The Only Flag in Palin's Office?

"The only flag at my office is an Israeli flag," Sarah Palin told Israeli President Shimon Perez, according to the (now-defunct) New York Sun. "I want you to know and I want Israelis to know that I am a friend."

Remember all the fuss about Barack Obama not wearing a flag pin? Seems a bit silly compared to the governor of an American state having a foreign flag in her office instead of an American flag. Even if Palin misspoke and she meant that the Israeli flag is the only foreign flag in her office, what is she doing with foreign flags in her office? And if she's going to start putting up foreign flags, is she seriously saying that Israel (a country she has never visited) is more important to Alaska than Canada, where she wants to build a giant natural gas pipeline? Or Russia, a country from which Palin claimed to receive trade missions, but apparently never did?

Maybe her support for Israel has something to do with her church's view that terrorist attacks against Israel are a good thing, because they are the beginning of the final battle between good and evil that will result in the slaughter of the Jews and the return of Jesus.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Wayne Allyn Root and Sarah Palin

Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root continues to embarrass himself by fluffing Sarah Palin - supposedly his opponent - most recently in a Pacifica Radio interview. I listened to the 8 minute interview so you don't have to. The highlights:

Root describes Palin as "a female actress portraying me."
He brags about never having held any elective office, and how this qualifies him to be vice president.
He blames the economic crisis on "community activist groups." Please, Wayne, name names.
He claims that Barack Obama has been in government his whole life. I guess he's forgetting about his community organizing years. And his time as a constitutional lawyer. And the constitutional law professor days.
But that experience doesn't count, I guess, because according to Root "The enemy of this country is lawyers."

If that's not enough Root silliness for you, on his blog Root claims that Palin won the vice presidential debate, despite overwhelming voter sentiment to the contrary. Why does Root think that his favorite vice presidential candidate cleaned up?

"Palin lacks the U.S. Senate pedigree, law degree, or the D.C. Beltway credentials of Biden, but she has Reaganesque-like (sic) charm, charisma and middle American values. She also has something that even a brash New Yorker like me appreciates- CHUTZPAH. Sarah, in an “aw shucks” kind of way, is more confident of a speaker and debater than any 5-term United States Senator. Like Reagan, she knows how to connect to her audience- soccer moms and NASCAR dads (or as she calls them “Joe Six Pack”)."

I'll just let that speak for itself.

But since we're on the subject of Palin's popularity, check out this video of hockey fans in Pennsylvania booing her mercilessly.

The Welfare State of Alaska

A letter in this week's issue of the Economist dovetails nicely with my thinking about Sarah Palin's experience as mayor of Wasilla. The letter:

SIR – Alaska is very different from the rest of the United States, and this difference affects the fitness of Mrs Palin to be vice-president. Fundamentally, Alaska is a pre-modern welfare state, where the economy is almost purely extractive (with the exception of defense and tourism). If you don’t kill it, dig it or cut it down you don’t get it. From that perspective “bridges to nowhere” are simply further extractions, or tokens for transfer payments from the rest of us, as are the annual payments to residents from North Slope oil revenues.

Not surprisingly Alaska is largely an innovation-free zone. It is also the only world that Mrs Palin has known. Along with her chronological and career inexperience this background renders her unprepared to lead the country.

Michael Golay
Professor of nuclear science and engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

[When Golay says that Alaska is "the only world that Mrs. Palin has known" he is, of course, leaving out the six-or-so years that Palin spent getting her BA at four different colleges in Hawaii and Idaho]

Palin Spokesman has an Unguarded Moment

Ben Porritt, a spokesman for Sarah Palin, told a group of college students at his alma mater over the weekend that he didn't think that it was a big deal that Barack Obama used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" when comparing the policies of John McCain and George W. Bush. He "felt Obama was just using an expression," according to a story in the Peoria Journal Star. But then he told the rest of the Palin media team about Obama's comment, and they "flipped out," he said, flogging it for days. Somehow I doubt this guy has a bright future in media relations.

The Libertarian Party of Alaska on Sarah Palin

Eric Dondero - a blogger and self-described "strong on defense libertarian" - raised an interesting point in the comments section of my "Welfare State of Wasilla" post from earlier this week. How can I claim that Sarah Palin isn't a libertarian, he asked, when the Libertarian Party of Alaska endorsed her in 2006? My simple answer is that I certainly don't take political positions because the Libertarian Party tells me to. But his question did get me wondering: How can the party of small government endorse a woman who's spent most of her career fighting for more federal pork?

I couldn't find an answer online, so I called some of the phone numbers listed on the contacts section of the Alaska LP web site. I reached party Secretary Rob Clift on the phone and asked him if I could ask a few questions for the blog. He was happy to talk.

First of all, Clift wanted to make clear that the Alaska LP did not endorse Palin. They said that they liked her, as did LP gubernatorial candidate Billy Toien, but there was never an official endorsement. Clift also said that the state party won't endorse the McCain/Palin ticket, though he might vote for them.

But why? For one thing, Palin's always been friendly to the party, Clift said, speaking at a few of their meetings and asking for their support. He also said that he sees her as a straight shooter, who doesn't try to hide her disagreement with libertarians on drugs, abortion and other social issues.

But what about the elephant in the room: her love of federal pork? On this point Clift was a bit apologetic, but not really phased.

"There's definitely a lot of federal money coming in here," he said. But the federal government is taking advantage of the state in numerous ways, such as controlling many acres of its land and restricting its shipping. "So you can see why we might like to get some of those earmarks. Get our money back."

Palin is, by Alaska's standards, not a big pork barrel spender, he said. Plenty of Alaska Libertarians support her, he added, and aren't bothered by the pork.

But what would she do about big spending as a federal politician? Clift said he didn't know.

The Welfare State of Wasilla

FiveThirtyEight.com has a graphical representation of "maverick," "reformer" Sarah Palin's home town of Wasilla, which receives 30 times as much federal pork per person as Boise. The rest of Nate Silver's post suggesting a new ad strategy for Obama is also worth reading.

What's Wrong with Being a Community Organizer?

Sarah Palin's been getting plenty of mileage this week out of her joke that being a mayor is "sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." Michelle Malkin says that community organizers deserve ridicule because Obama was a "rabble rouser" who used "bully tactics," like bringing dozens of angry residents to a city planning meeting to oppose a landfill.

Call me a pinko, but I personally prefer a candidate who spent the youthful idealism phase of his life trying to solve public policy problems by joining a non-profit and organizing voluntary actions, rather than getting into traditional politics. Or being a TV sports reporter in Anchorage.

If you're curious to know what community organizers actually do, Joe Klein explains.

Palin's Pork

Some libertarian blogs are going gaga over Sarah Palin this week. The reason for their excitement: Palin's supposed hatred for pork. I don't know where this rumor got started, but it's got to stop.

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin paid the lobbying firm Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh nearly $100,000 to get federal earmarks for the town. The firm succeeded, to the tune of $27 million - or about $5,000 for every resident of the town at the time (check out Palin's handwritten comments in the picture to the left). The earmarks included $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project linking Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood. As the Anchorage Press notes, "This is a town where about 500 people turn out to vote, where the city pays for the mayor’s car and a tiny government runs a $15 million hockey barn/sports arena." She also supported the $200 million "bridge to nowhere," though she now claims she opposed it (check out this picture).

So the next time you hear Sarah Palin bragging that she both cut taxes and improved services in Wasilla, ask yourself who might have paid for that. Then ask yourself if you believe her when she says that "I have championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress."

Update: "I am not denying that Sarah Palin may have great skills. She may well. I am insisting that neither you, nor I, nor John McCain has any valid reason to believe that she does. This is not an argument about the attributes she lacks. It's an argument about the information we lack. I am pleading with my fellow conservatives: Please demand more and better knowledge before you commit yourselves to a political leader. That's all." - former Bush speech writer David Frum (via PoliticalWire)

Update II: Not only did Palin support the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, but even after she started opposing it, she didn't oppose it quite enough to send the money back to Washington. Alaska kept the $200 million and spent it on other pork barrel projects.

Update III: "John McCain and Sarah Palin criticized Democrat Barack Obama over the amount of money he has requested for his home state of Illinois, even though Alaska under Palin's leadership has asked Washington for 10 times more money per citizen for pet projects." - The Associated Press, via TalkingPointsMemo.