Faith and Freedom showdown: Palin v. Bachmann

Move over Sarah Palin. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is stealing your thunder. (And I don’t mean Rolling Thunder.)

At this weekend’s Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, Bachmann brought the house down. In a crowd of devoted religious conservatives, Bachmann hit all the right buttons and had the crowd screaming, clapping and on their feet.

While Palin was on her “private” vacation bus tour (in fact, her 10 year old Piper said to a reporter, “Thanks for ruining our vacation.”) Bachmann was looking and talking like a serious candidate for the presidency. Every Republican presidential hopeful and most Republican political leaders showed up at the conference, organized by Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition.

Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Bachmann addressed the gathering. Newt Gingrich sent a video as he was on vacation. House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor were there. Even The Donald couldn’t resist a cameo appearance. Palin, who was invited, was the only no-show.

Now I know that Palin and Bachmann say they are friends. They have to. And they say they don’t see any competition from each other. But if Palin really is considering a run she is going to be in for a shock, because from the point of view of the very religious Christian right, Bachmann beats Palin in every category: Family values? Both have large biological families, but Bachmann has also 23 foster children.

Right to life? Palin is anti-abortion and calls it murder. Yet she was lauded for her honesty in admitting she actually considered the procedure when she was pregnant with her last child, a Down’s Syndrome baby....

I just want a somebody elected who’ll end Roe v Wade and the legalized death industry....

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Then palin might not be your girl...the following is from a 2008 interview...

"Q: Do you think there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

A: I do. Yeah, I do.

Q: The cornerstone of Roe v. Wade.

A: I do. And I believe that individual states can best handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in an issue like that."

Her oft stated objection to RvW is not the fact that abortion is murder but that the decision should be made at the state level.

“Big mistake, Sarah. You should have been there. You just kissed off your base.”

While Palin is both formidable and adorable, it baffles me when folks refer to her base as the evangelical voter.

It’s because the woman who wrote the article has no clue about anything concerning Palin except that she is extremely jealous of her accomplishments and how she got where she got. Hard work and determination. Check out Sally Quinn and see how she got where she got.

Sarah's explanation for her support of LOST is that it would protect Alaska's access to Artic energy resources. At least one conservative pro-sovereignty group has written her a letter explaining how LOST is not needed to do this and that it represents a serious threat to national sovereignty. The assessment that LOST represents a MAJOR threat to national sovereignty is shared by every major conservative organization that has weighed in on the issue. They forced the hand of the candidates running in the GOP Primary and every one of them came out against it. Even McCain reversed his earlier support for it. Sarah has expressed her support for this more than once.

She also signed a Climate Change order the same year that she sent that letter of support for LOST to Alaska's Senate delegation. That order contained a lot of verbiage that you often hear from the environmentalist movement, including support for "regional" carbon registries and carbon caps. Such things require a sovereign body to enforce. When asked in the VP debates about whether she supports carbon caps her response was that she does:

Q: Let me clear something up: Sen. McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Sen. Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don’t believe you’ve always supported. Do you support capping carbon emissions?

PALIN: I do. I do. “

PALIN: I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We’ve got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an “all of the above” approach to deal with climate change impacts. As we rely more on other countries that don’t care as much about the climate as we do, we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. It’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet.

Source: 2008 Vice Presidential debate against Joe Biden Oct 2, 2008

If the problem with other countries is that "we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for", the implied solution is that there should be some authority that would not allow them to do so. Couple this with her support for LOST and I have serious questions about whether she understands the fundamental concerns associated with National Sovereignty.

As for Michele hiring someone who criticized Palin, that is politics. Palin supporters have been criticizing Michele as well. This does not worry me because campaign operatives handle the nuts and bolts of running a campaign, not the forming of policy. My concern with Sarah is on the policy level. She is on record for.... the L.O.S.T. Treaty, Carbon Credits, a Windfall profits Tax, Amnesty, ” registration” which is the prelude to amnesty, and endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. She was also a major supporter of the "Bridge to Nowhere" and did not reverse course on this position until it became a national embarrassment and Congress cut off funding for it.

I have no such policy concerns with Michele.

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