Yes, Palin is Loyal, but to What and to Whom?

Conflicting loyalties seem to have resulted in some surprising political decisions by Sarah Palin.

On Monday here at NewsReal Blog I argued that Govenor Sarah Palin’s active support of John McCain’s Senate reelection campaign makes no sense. Palin, after all, doesn’t owe McCain anything. Whatever debt she might have owed McCain she paid off during the 2008 presidential campaign.

In fact, if anything, it seems to me that McCain is indebted to Palin. This because his ‘08 campaign really did her a disservice, and also because McCain staffers have since betrayed the former Alaska governor with malicious and disparaging leaks to the media.

Many of the commenters to my post don’t disagree. However, they write, there is one laudable reason why Palin is actively supporting McCain: loyalty.

Fair enough. Loyalty is important. But it seems to me that Palin has competing loyalty obligations; and that she chose to be loyal to McCain when she just as easily could have chosen to be loyal to other people and other principles instead.

For example, Palin knows that some of her most steadfast supporters in the conservative and Tea Party movements have very profound and important differences with McCain.

These Palin supporters believe that on too many critical issues — including free speech (aka “campaign finance reform”), military modernization, and illegal immigration – McCain is a liberal wolf in a conservative sheep’s clothing.

What about loyalty to these people? What about loyalty to their issues and concerns? Why does loyalty to one man, one politician, outweigh loyalty to millions of dedicated conservative and Tea Party activists?

And why does personal loyalty to a man (McCain) outweigh loyalty to a set of conservative political principles?

No one’s saying that Palin had to actively oppose McCain. That might, indeed, have been awkward and ill-advised given that she was his vice presidential running mate.

But why did Palin have to go out of her way to actively support and campaign for McCain? Why couldn’t she have praised both McCain and his challenger, Rep. J.D. Hayworth, while remaining neutral in the Arizona Senate race?

Friedersdorf says that Palin simply may not be the conservative her steadfast supporters think she is. She may, in fact, be a John McCain Republican. This would mean that she is liberal on some issues, moderate on others, and conservative about a few things.

Continetti notes that since being thrust into the national limelight, Palin has “become incredibly rich.” It may be — and this is me speaking, not Continetti — that because of her newfound riches, Palin feels an understandable debt, literally and figuratively, to Sen. McCain.

If true, that’s fine. Making money to support one’s family is honorable. But that’s a different type of loyalty, I think, than many of the governor’s defenders have in mind.

John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. You can follow him on Twitter: @Guardian0.

Do you see how you are? Everyone knows that Bristol got pregnant - it is so old news but you harping on it - gossipers find it impossible to NOT get in peoples business and use it to make themselves look ‘holier than thou’ meanwhile, you have no idea what tomorrow will bring to you. Those kind of darts you aim, have a way of returning - the darts turn into a boomerang.

And you use your obsession as a gossiper to come against a conservative. Your posts say more about you, than they do about SARAH. What you sow, you reap - it’s a law, you can’t change it.

Your posts have the opposite effect - your meanness of spirit is a turn off, no one likes a gossiper - so they see SARAH in a more positive site - just like when the media pulled their meanness and targeted her family - instead the public where more drawn to her because she is one of them - normal family with ups and downs.

You have placed your assumptions onto the Palin’s - because of your ‘hang ups’ . I can only imagine what your teenage years were like and don’t bother explaining, - your words mean nothing, a gossiper is void of truth and your hang ups say it all.

ROCK ON SARAH - people are exposing themselves when they ‘try’ to trash you. We see it in the media and people in general. GREAT GOING, SARAH - some people can’t handle a successful woman, mom of 5 and PATRIOT who is so loved and respected. Their own insecurities rise up!

Gossip? It’s on the record, my friend. Instead of a lot of bla-bla-bla pseudo-psychology, why don’t you answer my specific points?

Sarah Palin would not be where she is today, were she not a small-town mom of five kids. That’s what she is all about. That’s what made her seem genuine against the elite feminist big-city liberals. But unfortunately, the Palins turn out to be a typical two-wage earner family, with the kids cast to the winds.

Working parents who abandon their kids are the materialistic ghost that haunts families and empties out neighborhoods and destroys the bonds of civilization. The Palins — as the second-most famous political family in America — should be a better example for the great Biblical cause of a godly, close-knit family.

Thank you, thank you very much!

You still don’t get it. You are deliberate blind - but you continue to prove my point. You CAN’T stop trashing her/her family - it’s an obsession - that you NEEd to feel better about yourself. Truth is, in that process, you revealed more about yourself that’s a turnoff to conservatives - A whiny liberal with major hangups.

You are merely just someone behind a screen - void of any accomplishments or character with, no doubt a troubled past, points a finger at a successful woman with a beautiful Patriot family. She will always be successful - not a darn thing your hatred towards good can do about it - just like the press can’t - with all their tearing her apart like you. It’s all about evil attacking good - how pathetic evil looks.

Once again Sarah gets under the skin of the ‘do nothings in life’ and to scratch that itch they need to attack. Yep, your hangups scream with your endless dribble.

Rock on SARAH! The ‘do nothings’ with troubled pasts attached themselves to you - they are indeed a clinging bunch who want to be relevant on YOUR accomplishments!

“Sarah Palin would not be where she is today, were she not a small-town mom of five kids.”

Palin was a small town Mayor, and a small town City Councilwoman, and then a State Governor.

Governor palin was emerging as a superstr conservative politician before 2008.

The Most Popular Governor
Alaska’s Sarah Palin is the GOP’s newest star.
BY Fred Barnes
July 16, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 41

The wipeout in the 2006 election left Republicans in such a state of dejection that they’ve overlooked the one shining victory in which a Republican star was born. The triumph came in Alaska where Sarah Palin, a politician of eye-popping integrity, was elected governor. She is now the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating in the 90s, and probably the most popular public official in any state.

Her rise is a great (and rare) story of how adherence to principle—especially to transparency and accountability in government—can produce political success. And by the way, Palin is a conservative who only last month vetoed 13 percent of the state’s proposed budget for capital projects. The cuts, the Anchorage Daily News said, “may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history.”

As recently as last year, Palin (pronounced pale-in) was a political outcast. She resigned in January 2004 as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to the office of Governor Frank Murkowski and to state Attorney General Gregg Renkes about ethical violations by another commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, who was also Republican state chairman.

State law barred Palin from speaking out publicly about ethical violations and corruption. But she was vindicated later in 2004 when Ruedrich, who’d been reconfirmed as state chairman, agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking state ethics laws. She became a hero in the eyes of the public and the press, and the bane of Republican leaders.

In 2005, she continued to take on the Republican establishment by joining Eric Croft, a Democrat, in lodging an ethics complaint against Renkes, who was not only attorney general but also a long-time adviser and campaign manager for Murkowski. The governor reprimanded Renkes and said the case was closed. It wasn’t. Renkes resigned a few weeks later, and Palin was again hailed as a hero.

Palin, 43, the mother of four, passed up a chance to challenge Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, the then-governor’s daughter, in 2004. She endorsed another candidate in the primary, but Murkowski won and was reelected. Palin said then that her 14-year-old son talked her out of running, though it’s doubtful that was the sole reason.

In 2006, she didn’t hesitate. She ran against Gov. Murkowski, who was seeking a second term despite sagging poll ratings, in the Republican primary. In a three-way race, Palin captured 51 percent and won in a landslide. She defeated former Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general election, 49 percent to 41 percent. She was one of the few Republicans anywhere in the country to perform above expectations in 2006, an overwhelmingly Democratic year. Palin is unabashedly pro life.

With her emphasis on ethics and openness in government, “it turned out Palin caught the temper of the times perfectly,” wrote Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News. She was also lucky. News broke of an FBI investigation of corruption by legislators between the primary and general elections. So far, three legislators have been indicted.

In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals. “The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.

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