Posted on 11/26/2008 6:54:02 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
Why does Sarah Palin continue to receive so much media coverage? Peggy Noonan has a theory. The Wall Street Journal columnist believes the MSM is up to what she considers "mischief": attempting to make Sarah Palin the face of the Republican party.
Noonan propounded her premise during an appearance today on Morning Joe.
View video here.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
No, you don't know her record or you would never make such a statement about her interaction with these oil companies. You obviously don't understand the complex relationship Alaskans have with the big oil empires that for years controlled their state.
BTW, I also like Bobby Jindal, but I don't see the need to pit him against Palin. They're both strong voices of a younger conservative movement. Conservatives shouldn't feel the need to eat their own. The people of Alaska own their natural resources. 85% of the state’s revenue comes from taxes on oil and gas. Those are finite resources. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. With oil prices at record highs and the oil wells depleting, she made an excellent and fiscally responsible decision to renegotiate the Severance Tax paid by the oil companies to the people of Alaska. These oil empires had illegally been buying off politicians to keep the severance tax artificially low. That's why the FBI came in to investigate these corruption charges, and that's why so many of these politicians are now in jail! These companies don’t care about Alaska’s future. They don’t care what happens to the state when the oil wells run dry. She does! Alaska’s history is replete with one example after another of outsiders exploiting the natural resources and leaving behind ghost towns when the good times finished rolling. Sarah Palin is an avowed Alaskan history buff. She’s well aware of what these oil empires will do when they’re through with Alaska. They'll leave it high and dry. She increased that Severance Tax to prepare for the day when that would happen.
When production is up, the tax goes down. When the production is down, the tax goes up. It's a win win for the oil companies and the people of Alaska. What Palin did was end the corruption between the politicians and the oil companies. Any "Tax increase" is just the end of a tax loophole that these companies used to get. Crony capitalism is not real capitalism. If you own a product, there is nothing wrong with trying to negotiate the best price for your product. That's all that Governor Palin did on behalf of her beloved Alaskans.
Gee, it's nice of you to concede that successfully negotiating the deal for the largest private infrastructure project in North American history and the most significant victory in decades in the fight to make our country energy independent is "very important". Nice of you.
The tone of your comments reminds me of something Palin once said in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News in October 2006, before she was elected governor:
Palin smiled and sighed at the mention of her old adversary’s name.“I couldn’t do anything without Nick Carney griping about it. That was the nature of our relationship,” Palin said. “I could have walked across Lake Lucile on the water, and he would have griped about me splashing.”
For Palin, her landslide re-election in 1999 answered the critics.
She had nothing much to say on health care or the bailout or most of the other issues that a governor has to deal with.
Perhaps she didn't speak about these issues at length on the campaign trail (she only joined McCain in the last two months of his campaign -- and he was the one running for president, you may recall!), but she has spoken a lot about these issues. You can listen to her discuss these issues and others at length in this interview she gave with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review back in July 2007. You'll hear the voice of an articulate and principled conservative.
“Gee, it’s nice of you to concede that successfully negotiating the deal for the largest private infrastructure project in North American history and the most significant victory in decades in the fight to make our country energy independent is “very important”. Nice of you.”
Yes, she would be great in charge of the Dept of Energy.
You’re comments have no bearing in reality. They’re snide and irrational. Unless you would like to put forward an honest criticism, which I can attempt to answer, I think our discussion is over.
But you are wasting your breath on a person who quotes John McCain's clap trap campaign speech to "fight the good fight.....blah, blah, blah" on his profile page. Geeeez !
Who are these people? No wonder we lost !
I would like to know:
1) What about the bailout and the socialiazation of America's banking system?
2) Socialization of health care is next. What is she going to do about that?
3) Is she willing to subvert the constitution to "protect" us? Or, will she follow the rule of law? Are our rights to be secure in our properties, papers and possessions just as important as our rights to be "safe" from foreign powers?
4) What about the constitution? Has she read it? (that is not a sneer. I would venture most of our leaders don't have a clue as to what it says).
5) Social Security costs are careening completely out of control. How does she propose to fix it? Specifics, please.
Her heart is in the right place, I believe. However, I believed Bush's heart was in the right place when I voted for him twice, and he has been a phenomenal disappointment to me. Pardon me for asking for more before throwing my hat in the ring this time.
I have this theory...crazy as it may seem....that McCain had no belief he would win the election nor had any intent to win the election. I believe he thought Hillary would win the election and he was actually ‘okay’ with that. Obama was a surprise but one he could live with.
He ran a lousy race. He didn’t even ‘work week-ends’. He wouldn’t use any ammo against Obama. He insulted his supporters at his rallys. He ran as a cross-over not a Republican.
I think he chose Sarah Palin because she is conservative and a female. I believe he chose her thinking she would placate the conservatives in the GOP. In reality, he hasn’t given a whig about conservatives and still doesn’t.
I believe he thought she wouldn’t make a difference one way or the other. What he DIDN’T expect was the public’s reaction to her. He didn’t expect her to be so warmly received nor did he expect the level of excitement she brought to the ticket. That is why he had to pull her in, limit her words, set her up with interviews with hostile anchors and then limit what she said. He had to keep her weak.
He wouldn’t let her on an interview without him sitting by her side making her look weak and ineffective. I believe that he used her as a sacrificial lamb. She was an easy throw away after the election. Funny....no one that loves her wants her thrown away. Also funny, is that she gave a real shot at winning to that big loser.
So, after the election...what happens...he continues to allow HER OWN PARTY members to trash her. He continues to not want her to be important. He wants her to be thrown away. He wants her not to be popular. He wants her to remain thought of as dumb, uneducated, ineffective, unskilled. As does some of the GOP talking heads.
McCain is not a Republican...he is a Democrat...he is absolutely a RINO in the worse sense of the word and I hope the good people of Arizona will find a good conservative candidate to oppose him in 2010 and beat the living crappola out of him in the election. He needs to go out there to the same graveyard that those ole beat up airplanes go. He has outlived his usefulness as far as I am concerned. But, Sarah....she has yet to see her potential. We cannot allow certain members of the Republican party to control this party the way they have been doing. We don’t need to be another level of the Democratic party. We need to offer other solutions and beliefs...standards and platforms. RINOS..BE GONE should be our motto.
I don’t think that was very snide. I think Sarah is very well versed in energy in general and oil in particular. I would love to see her head the DOE. She’d be in her element and nothing but good could from it. How is that in any way snide? If anything, it’s complimentary.
Next, you can hear her discuss her philosophy in this four part interview with Armstrong Williams.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
As for having "read the Constitution," you might be interested in her learning about her obsession with the Alaskan Constitution. She is famous for being a strict constructionist when it comes to her state's constitution. She made a name for herself by pulling that constitution out, dusting it off, and citing it constantly as the blueprint for how Alaskan leaders should govern. Her inaugural address was a discourse on the wisdom of the drafters of the Alaskan constitution and how that document would be her guide in governing. Needless to say, she has a great deal of respect for founding documents and is not interested in foisting her social views on the libertarian leaning citizenry of Alaska.
If you want to understand her approach to government, you should keep in that Alaska fundamentally libertarian state. Sarah Palin had more LIBERTARIAN creds than anyone in this race.
Put it this way: When Don Young, Alaska’s only House member, found himself in a tight race this time around, he aggressively courted the endorsement of none other than Ron Paul.
It should also be noted that well over a year ago, the first group to push for a Sarah Palin vp candidacy was the Ron Paul supporters! They thought that if Paul had by some miracle won the nomination, Sarah Palin would have been the perfect choice for his vp because she is ideologically in line with his libertarian values. Her approach to government is centered on her belief that the most effective government is local. Problems are solved locally. And what works on a local level should not be assumed to work on a national or even state level. Her support of local revenue sharing is a great case in point. Her criticism of “No Child Left Behind” is based on the fact that it is counterproductive in Alaska because in remote rural regions there is no alternative to the public school. If the public school fails the “No Child Left Behind” litmus test, there is no other option. Whenever Washington tries a “one size fits all” approach to matters like this they fail miserably. Her frustration at Washington interference could be felt in her RNC convention speech when she spoke of “getting more marching orders from Washington, D.C.” It’s classic small government libertarianism.
BTW, during the primaries the only candidate that Palin gave enthusiastic impromptu praise for was…wait for it...Ron Paul! I’m not suggesting that she would agree with him on everything, but she is certainly sympathetic to his libertarian ideals.
And one more BTW...Palin is the only politician who can say that when she smoked pot it was legal! LOL! She said she tried it once and didn’t care for it, but it was in fact legal to do so in Alaska at the time. Got to love the Last Frontier!
We should also keep in mind that the issues facing Alaska and the governance of Alaska are very different from those facing the rest of the states. They really are an exception to most rules. That's why Alaska is never included in the think tank research papers and annual reports ranking governors by their fiscal policies. They can't include Alaska in the rankings because it doesn't work under the same criteria as the other states. In many ways it is it's own fiefdom, and for decades it was a corrupt fiefdom. Sarah Palin changed that dramatically. That's why she is so loved up there.
I do not know if Sarah Palin will even run for president, but I can say with conviction that she has been an excellent governor of her state.
And I do not think she is at all like George W. Bush. Bush came from a famous political family and used that connection to rise to power. Palin came from humble beginnings with no political connections to draw upon. Her father was middle school science teacher; her husband is a blue collar oil production operator and commercial fisherman. She paid her own way through state college, and started her rise to power by joining the PTA and the city council. Once in power, Palin governed as a common sense fiscal conservative. Bush did not. Palin's populism is based on American values of self reliance and local autonomy. Bush's populism is grounded in what he called "compassionate conservatism" -- which translated into big government spending programs which were really only a more efficient variation of LBJ's Great Society. During this past election, Palin didn't promise goodies and programs (though she did say that she would re-prioritize existing programs to make sure they meet new challenges -- such as those presented by families with special needs children). She simply promised to put government back on the side of the people by reining in spending and making sure taxes are low. That's basic Reaganesque conservatism.
One of the things she did right away when she was elected governor is send out a directive to all government agencies to reduce their spending by 10% or she will do it for them. You tell me when Bush ever made a directive like that?
“That’s why the FBI came in to investigate these corruption charges, and that’s why so many of these politicians are now in jail!”
good, they did their part. But there is no reason for the govt to raise taxes on the people who actually do all the work. I’m always skeptical whenever the govt comes up with a new reason to raise taxes on *anybody.*
And it’s never crony capitalism when taxes are cut. Crony capitalism is when the govt bails out companies or when it punishes some companies in order to benefit the competing companies with the biggest lobbyists.
You wrote: Conservatives shouldn’t feel the need to eat their own.
I agree but we have to be careful. We just had the experience of 8 years of George W Bush. He won the base because he connected with the folks and said and did a few conservative things. And then he completely fell apart. I really don’t want that to happen again...we have such a terrible guy in charge.
You're still not understanding this. What she did vis-a-vis the Severance Tax is a perfect example of capitalism at work. The people of Alaska own a product (i.e., oil), they are selling the lease to develope that product to companies. They deserve to get the best price for their product. That is basic capitalism. She represented her client (i.e., the people of Alaska) and she got a fair price for their product. The price was artificially keep low because the oil companies bought off politicians. Those politicians were investigated by the FBI and are now in jail. Those are the basic facts. She did not impose a "wind-fall profits" tax on oil companies. It was a Severance Tax. It's totally different.
Alaskans have a love/hate relationship with these oil empires because their own history tells them what happens when companies who rush into the state to extract the state's rich natural resources do when the good times are over. They leave ghost towns behind, and they invariably ruin the environment too. The Valdez oil spill case is a great case in point. Exxon had a known drunk captain in charge of rig. They were totally irresponsible there. Take a look at this article from 2004 explaining Palin's role in whistleblowing when she was the Commissioner of Oil and Gas. You'll get an interesting idea of how monied interests clash with the common good.
I agree but we have to be careful. We just had the experience of 8 years of George W Bush. He won the base because he connected with the folks and said and did a few conservative things. And then he completely fell apart. I really don’t want that to happen again...we have such a terrible guy in charge.Hear, hear! I agree whole heartedly. And as I said in my post above, I do not think Palin is Bush. I listed specific reasons why I don't. Take a look at it, and feel free to debate me about it. I'm willing to listen. I think this lady has great deal of political courage and the right instincts. I encourage you to listen to those interviews and seriously study her record.
“She represented her client (i.e., the people of Alaska) and she got a fair price for their product. “
but she’s part of the government! That’s what throws me off. If I own something and if I had a legal dispute with the companies then I’d try to settle the issue in court, not the legislature.
Ari, it's called "representative democracy" for a reason. She is the people's representative. As I noted, Alaska is a very special state. It's constitution stipulates that the state's natural resources belong to the people, and their leaders must represent their interests in negotiating with those who wish to buy their product.
How can you not grasp this concept of barter? I have a product and wish to sell it for the best price. My representative negotiates with you over the price. That's all well and good. But let's say that you bribe that representative and they draft a deal that cheats me and favors you. It would require a new and honest representative to come in and renegotiate that deal to get a fair value for my product. That's what Governor Palin did. How is that a bad thing? How is that anti-capitalism?
And more important, how is her opening the bidding on the natural gas pipeline to a free market anti-capitalism? She did the most Reaganesque thing imaginable. She developed AGIA (Alaska Gasline Incentive Act) which laid out how much the state would pay for a gasline, laid out the state's requirements, and then presented it to open market bidding. It worked. She called the big three oil companies bluff. No one had been able to negotiate that pipeline before, and they’d been trying for 30 years. Too many people tried to get control of the project. It was as slippery as middle east peace agreement. Palin developed that pipeline inducement program (AGIA) and made Alaska's major goal keeping the pipeline open to all producers. Sounds easy, but only in retrospect. A key to successful negotiations is having a backbone, btw. Not too many of those in Washington.
Thank you. I’ll keep answering the criticisms because I refuse to allow a good conservative leader to be slandered and have her record unfairly maligned.
I am learning things I didn't know about SP from your posts. Thank you.
One other thing......you have been blessed with the Virtue of Patience in dealing with our friend, Ari. More patience than I could muster!
thanks for the links.
I knew Sarah had good things to say about Ron Paul, and that scores points in my book. I do appreciate the links.
I hope your thanksgiving was happy.
There are a great many misconceptions out there about Sarah Palin.
People have turned Sarah Palin into a "rorschach candidate" and have seen whatever they want to see in her regardless of her actual record or positions.
They define her as the uber social conservative Christian Right candidate. Let's take a look at her positions and see if her record fits that perception.
She is on the record as stating her belief in evolution and that it should be taught in science classes. Her father is a science teacher and an amateur naturalist. He has an 10,000 year old fossil in his house (he showed it off on CBS), so obviously she believes the earth is more than 6,000 years old. Her only reference to creationism is an off handed comment she made that if this is such a hot button issue than perhaps the best way to alleviate the tension is to simply “teach both” and have done with it. Just to put this in perspective -- the comment was made in the context of a discussion of what should happen if a kid brought up the issue of creationism in class. She felt that the kid and teacher should be free to discuss it. But she never said that it should be part of the curriculum, and she said that she would never push to have it added in any curriculum. In effect, she was saying that free speech should not be discouraged on this topic or any other in the classroom. Her "teach both" comment was spoken in the same vein as the famous quip that the answer to free speech that offends you is more free speech.
She is on the record as not supporting abstinence only education. She thinks contraception should also be taught in sex ed classes too. However, she does not believe there should be "explicit" sex ed classes. She thinks a discussion of contraception is "relatively benign". I suppose you could describe her position as "moderate" and common sense.
She signed into law a bill granting same sex couples joint benefits despite calls from social conservatives to veto it. She signed it because she was told that the state's Supreme Court would over rule her veto. Her response to the social conservatives was to organize and amend the constitution if they wanted to change this.
In her vice presidential debate with Biden she said that she would never do anything "to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital [for same sex couples] or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties." In other words, she's open to civil union laws for same sex couples, but hands off marriage. That's the sensible moderate position the majority of people in this country take.
She did express her support of a Federal Marriage Amendment. But considering that whenever and wherever same sex marriage is placed on the ballot, it is voted down, only to be overturned by over-reaching judges, and then to be placed on the ballot again, I think it might be time for Americans to have done with this issue once and for all. I would absolutely love to watch a Democratic presidential candidate try to defend a stance against an amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. Go ahead, try it! When Palin made her non-support of gay marriage perfectly clear during her debate, Biden practically jumped up and down shouting, "me too, me too! I don't support it either!" It was about the only thing both of them agreed upon. Far from being a losing issue, Palin's support of a Marriage Amendment is a winning one. Civil union laws can and should be for states to decide. Marriage is another matter because it goes hand in hand with our freedom of religion.
How about the issue of schooling? Palin proudly states that her kids go to public school and her family is full of public school teachers. She even vetoed a charter school bill because it is against the Alaskan state constitution. As I noted in an earlier post, she is famous for being a strict constructionist when it comes to her state's constitution.
She resisted the urge to get bogged down in debate on social issues when her chief political opponent, Alaska's Republican Senate Majority Leader Lyda Green, proposed a special session to vote on a pro-life bill at the same time that Palin was trying to rally bipartisan support for her Alska Gasline Incentive Act (AGIA). It was a shameless political maneuver by Green because she knew how much Palin cared about pro-life issues and she knew that a fight over this would cause partisan bickering and Palin was relying on her good relationship with Democrats to get AGIA passed. Palin didn't take the bait. She refused to sign off on the special session proposal. And Palin did successfully get AGIA passed. All of this illustrates another point -- Palin is pragmatic. She will not push for the impossible. She will not polarize people. She makes clear goals and she fulfills them. She has clear principles and she sticks to them. Everyone knows where she stands.
As for her church attendance, Palin has stated on the record that she is not a member of any church. When asked her denomination, she says simply "Christian" and when asked to clarify, she says she's just a "bible believing" Christian. Her parents have said that they were never "hard core anything". Her father and brother are not believers, but her father said that he believes in God and goes to church as a matter of family unity. Her father described his wife and daughters as "born again Christians".
Interestingly enough, Palin is a lot like Reagan in her faith. Reagan wasn't a regular church goer, and neither is Palin. However, like Reagan, Palin is devout in her faith. Reagan was a Christian in the best sense of the word — he believed and lived it, and spoke about it comfortably and with sincere conviction, but he did not feel the need to thrust it on others. Palin is the same way.
Her pro-life stance is the one area where she is as hard core socially conservative as it gets.
Her position, it should be noted, is a philosophically consistent one. Whenever I hear a Republican politician declare that they are pro-life except in the cases of rape or incest, I think, "well isn’t that convenient." It's wrong to take the life of an unborn child unless that child's father committed a terrible crime, then it's okay to kill the child. That makes absolutely no sense at all. Either it's wrong because it's a human life or it's not. We do not punish the child for the sins of the father. Politicians who take this rape and incest exception seem to me to be panderers. They know that they need to be pro-life in accordance with their party's platform and in order to garner the votes of their party's base, but they don't want to alienate the MSM when they shoot back at them that rape and incest argument, so they figure they'll just nip that issue in the bud by saying, "it's okay in that instance." This is their way of saying, "I really don't want to talk about all this pro-life stuff. Can we just move along?" That famous pro-choicer George Herbert Walker Bush was the first to really make good use of this rape and incest exception after he suddenly saw the light on abortion and decided he was pro-life after all. Palin doesn't play this game. She is pro-life by principle. She believes an unborn baby is a human life and killing an unborn child is wrong regardless of what that child's father did.
And so, there we have her social conservatism. Does she sound like such an extremist to you? I think she's very electable with positions like that. I find it shameful that people are trying to distort her positions to make her look like some nutjob. They are doing this, I believe, partly from genuine ignorance and partly from malice. The people operating from ignorance are just listening to the lies. The people operating with malice are the ones telling the lies.
thanks for yet another informative post. I find myself liking this woman!
Ah ha! I could tell from the tenor of your great questions that you are a fellow Ron Paul lover. And now that I see the link in your handle to the Von Mises Institute, I have confirmation. Hail and well met, fellow libertarian!
My support for Palin had a lot to do with what I have come to see as the major reason why our foreign policy continues to go in the direction of empire. And that's our lack of energy independence.
I have listened to liberals cry for the last four years, "no wars for oil". And, let's be frank, we would not be in Iraq if their chief export was broccoli. We didn't care all that much about the genocide in Rwanda because Rwanda's chief export was coffee and tea. Even old Greenspan has admitted in his memoir that it was largely about oil. Sure, that was not the only reason and perhaps not even the chief reason why went in there. There were many other reasons – even reasons which were honorable in intention. But oil was a big part of it. We need oil -- not just for our cars, but for EVERYTHING. We need them for jets and generators. We use petro-pharmaceuticals and petro-fertilizers. We can't get food and goods from point A to point B with oil. Even if we made cars that run on banana peels, we would still need to drill for oil. So, do we continue to plant bases all over the globe and get into shooting matches over little countries like Georgia because we need to protect gas pipelines? (And all the while we'll claim that we're defending Georgia for democracy's sake! As if anyone really believes that...) Or do we drill here and now and pursue an "all of the above" approach to drafting a long term domestic policy for energy independence?
We can keep doing that or we can drill our own oil and make ourselves that much freer from the need to police the world's natural resources. The only candidate really talking seriously about this was Gov. Palin.
In her pre-vp nomination interviews her criticism of the Iraq war centered on her frustration that we are not following a course of energy independence to make us less reliant on dangerous foreign regimes. That sounds like good solid stuff to me.
I also supported her because of the culture war issue. We libertarian leaning folk know that there is often not a dime's worth of difference between the parties on fiscal matters. But the culture wars do really separate them. Sure, it's true that the GOP uses social conservatives once every four years and then throws us under the bus, but at least we all come together every four years to shout "no" to the culture of death.
How could she speak up on the issues when she had the Ball & McCain strapped to her leg. She owned Biden in her debate and will destroy Oblack.
Pray for W, Palin and Our Troosp
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.