In terms of population or area, I'm indifferent to the population disparity between NY or WY and Alaska and to the size disparity between TX or RI and Alaska. Governing a state is governing a state. I've run my own business with 3 employees, with 10, with 300, and with just about every number in between, as well as consulting for those with many thousands of employees, and what surprises me is how little difference size makes once you get past ten or so employees. [Note: I currently have no employees and act as an independent consultant.] Alaska is a state, which makes it big enough that running it successfully, as Sarah did, qualifies as executive experience. Read what they said about her four years ago, or three years back, or any time before McCain named her and she became a potential threat to socialism and not just to inefficiency and corrupt republicans:
The Most Popular Governor; Jul 16, 2007
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 . . .
She has the experience, the fundamental values, the backbone to live by her beliefs, and the charisma to win. She has been vetted more thoroughly than anyone in history, finding nothing more harmful than an occasional unflipping believable word choice or the coining of a new word that she refused to refudiate. Sarah is not just pro-gun in front of the NRA, but pro-Second Amendment at all times and in front of her own children. She is not just pro-life in front of those who love unborn children but even when facing the terrible dilemmas that the far left sees as automatic reasons to "choose" death for a child. She is not just pro-military for photo ops but pro-military when raising a son who deployed to Iraq. I could go on, but we know from her 24,000 pages of newly released and maniacally dissected correspondence, from every action in her life, and from our life experience of dealing with the real deal face-to-face that Sarah Palin is what she represents herself to be. What more could anyone ask?