“McCain and Obama did EXACTLY the same thing, i.e., “did little more than repeat ... applause lines over and over again on the campaign trail”. Why criticize Sarah for it but not the others?”
they did townhalls. They did lots of interviews. They wrote books and policy papers. Sarah seemed like she was nothing more than a parrot.
In two years she negotiated a natural gas pipeline that was stalled for 30 years. Got that? 30 years and no one could get that pipeline deal down. She did it. In her own words:
For the next three decades, there had been talk of building another pipeline to transport cleaner, greener natural gas down to the Lower 48. But that’s all it ever amounted to — talk. And one of the main obstacles was big oil itself — ExxonMobil and other companies.
They should have been competing to invest in a new means of delivering their product to market. Instead, they wanted a higher price than fair competition would yield. They were holding out for more billions of dollars — in public money. No one in good conscience could pay them what they wanted to build that pipeline. And that’s how we found things when I became governor: No progress, no pipeline, no gas revenue for Alaska, no added energy security for America.
So we introduced the big oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept some of them had forgotten — free-market competition. They had a monopoly on power and resources, and we broke it.
The result is, finally, progress on the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history — a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. When the last section is laid and its valves are opened, that pipeline will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. That pipeline will be a lifeline — freeing us from debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.
Don’t believe her? Try this article from Byron York from National Review.