I hope Palin didnt take any Corporate donations. /s
One of the great things about Palin is that the DBM scoured thousands of her e-mails and found nada, nothing, zip, nada.An amazing feat for anyone in politics today.
She took lots of “corporate donations”, if by that you mean donations from people who were president of corporations. Further, many were in the oil business, in companies that would benefit from more drilling in Alaska. And then she supported a change in the law which cost established oil companies extra money, and favored new drilling projects, which helped the companies whose presidents gave her money.
But first, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. That’s how donations work — you get money from people who think you will do things that help them. Nobody gives money to candidates who do things that hurt them. We all give money to candidates who will vote the way we want, and we stop donating if they vote the wrong way, do things we don’t want.
Second, Palin has the advantage that she never had to run for re-election. So she never had to raise any money as Governor. And when she needed money for the defense fund, someone else set that up and took donations (which I know eventually things went bad there and there were attacks on Palin because it was run by her friends but nobody every tied that directly to her and they gave the money back).
On the other hand, $5000? Nobody in their right minds thinks that a Governor is doing something he didn’t want to do for a $5000 donation, especially when it was clear it wasn’t going to play well to his base.
The more rational argument, which it appears Palin was making (I haven’t heard her yet, so I don’t yet believe she falsely accused him of taking a bribe like some people are saying) was that because Perry’s Chief of Staff left and joined Merck, it gave Merck the ear of the Governor. Perry would have listened to the man, because he trusted him. Not because of the money.
Perry would have done what he did not because his friend would make money, but because his friend would convince him that it would save lives. Perry wouldn’t want girls who engage in sex to pay for it with their lives, if there was a vaccine that could protect them (this isn’t like the argument for birth control, because getting CANCER isn’t the same as getting pregnant).
So now I can see that it is a form of crony capitalism, but not the type of “politician takes money and acts differently”, but rather “person of influence gets cushy private sector job and lobbies his old boss and convinces him to do something that helps his new company.