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I am learning things I didn't know about SP from your posts. Thank you.

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.