As we learn more and more each day about Governor Sarah Palin, more than a few comments have been percolating in the blogosphere about how her style of governing shares much in common with that of George W. Bush. This thought is a darkly disturbing one to those of us who honestly believe W. is quite frankly the worst nightmare to happen to the United States of America and its people in a long time. Certainly, over 70% of Americans believe this to be true.
If Sarah Palin is all that the GOP could come up with as its Vice Presidential candidate one must wonder what these people have in mind for a future United States. Does it intend to completely dismantle civil liberties,constitutional rights and democratic principles altogether? Will it privatize and politicize every governmental agency? Will it sell off our social security funds to Enron Kenny boy types so they can steal and squander it? Will it set up an even more authoritarian kind of presidency in which he or she is accountable to no one?
Will it replace qualified professionals with political cronies and hacks? Will McCain/Palin be another administration of neocon war mongers? Will it bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? Will it attack Russia, as Palin suggested in her interview with Charlie Gibson? How about China, while we’re at it?
The manner in which Sarah Palin responds to questions posed by journalists and the media certainly shows some interesting similarities.
During his interview with Sarah Palin, Gibson had asked her about earmarks, stating that Alaska was one of the largest recipients of such. Palin replied:
We sure are -- and this is what -- you go out and you ask any Alaskan this. This is what I've been telling Alaskans for these years that I've been in office, is no more.
The incoherence of this statement is precisely how W. would have responded. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead and confuse the listener. Palin, like W., is playing straight out of Rove’s Handbook: “How to Get Away with Confusing and Lying to the Media.” Hopefully the media and the press will do a better job at examining Palin than they did W.
So far, and very fortunately it does appear, at least recently, that the MSM is beginning to do its job. (See Georgia10's diary below.)
On Small Town Values.
Also checkout the editorial published in the New York Times: "Gov. Palin’s Worldview"
If (McCain) he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.
Since the GOP has issues with truth telling, I sure it is only a question of time before the McCain/Palin campaign comes after the media and press with its meat cleavers and brass knuckles.
The parallels and similarities between Palin and W. on a number of levels are striking and deeply distressing. According to the extensive front page article published: “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes” in the New York Times Sunday edition:
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Palin obviously shares W.’s proclivity for cronyism, too.
State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.
In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.
Palin, like W. is known to pave the way for her heckofjobs to replace professionals.
“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.
Palin and W. both intended to become our nation’s President.
Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.(Would that include poisoning a sitting President, Governor? Just asking.)
“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’
Her base is identical to that of W. It is comprised of right wing religious extremists and social conservatives.
In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.
Palin also shares W.’s contempt for the First Amendment.
The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”
I am not in the least bit surprised that the author of the censored book told the The Huffington Post "Sarah Palin is my mortal enemy."
click here for the full story.
"I rather suspected one of my books might be the one she targeted," said Michael Willhoite, author of "Daddy's Roomate" and several other children's books. "I can tell you right now, Ms. Palin is a very good mother and everything. But she is my mortal enemy. She is one of the enemies of the First Amendment and I can hardly [organize] my thoughts here, I am so offended by this."
Palin shows us she has much in common with W.’s appalling lack of principled ethics and integrity. Arrogance and hypocrisy do not seem to be a problem for her either.
Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.
Alas, later:
In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.
“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”
Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.
Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.
In the case above we saw Palin’s use of Rove’s “attack the messenger” strategy. She verbally assaulted Jenkins immediately, despite the fact that he had not written the article about her.
Worst of all, Palin clearly demonstrates that she supports W.’s authoritarian style of leadership. Oversight, transparency and accountability are their worst nightmares.
Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.
While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”
And like W. Palin surrounds herself with a small inner circle of loyalists, friends and cronies. I suspect these folks are as incompetent as W.’s.
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.
During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.
Is the case below, Palin is a perfect clone of Karl Rove:
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.
On traveling abroad and international exposure.
Before becoming President, W. had never ventured outside of this country. Palin has done so one time and she lied about where she actually went, according to an article in the Washington Post:
Palin Camp Provides Conflicting Accounts on Iraq Trip
Palin had stated previously that she had been to Iraq. But, an inconvenient reporter, Anne E. Kornblut, reported an inconvenient truth about Palin’s venture outside the U.S. Palin’s spokesman had to write a third revision about this issue. Let’s see how long it is before Palin’s spokesperson attack Kornblut for smearing her.
Lieutenant Colonel Dave Osborn, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 207th Infantry of the Alaska National Guard told the Globe she did not venture into Iraq. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said.
Late Saturday, a Palin spokeswoman provided yet a third revision to the story, stating that the Alaska governor briefly traveled a quarter of a mile across the border into Iraqi territory at the crossing point.
What WAS McCain thinking when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate? Is she another demagogue whose sole purpose is to ensure his election?
This should tell us a little bit about John McCain’s appalling and dreadful lack of sound judgment.
If McCain is elected, Palin will become our nation’s President. Mark my words and
check out what the good doctor has to say.
Four more years of George W. Bush?
Adios American democracy as we know it.
That said, the good news is, more than a few women in Alaska have a few things to say about Bush in a dress.
Like so many of us, women in Alaska realize we have choices. Stick to the status quo of bullying and lying leadership. Or move to a new level of politics that inspires hope and change.
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