Mon, 14 Feb 2011

(for proof, be sure to click all of the supporting links)

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Sarah Palin is no conservative.  And, I could’ve told you that a couple of years ago.

In fact, back in 2009, I did tell some people that.  They didn’t believe me.  All they saw were the big-name Republican Party insider endorsements, the media hype, and the so-called “heat factor“.

So, why am I writing about Sarah Palin again?  She recently came back into the spotlight with her soft opinion about the homosexual group GOProud infiltrating the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

If they had looked past all of that smoke and mirrors, and instead looked at what she actually said and supported, then they could’ve seen the phoniness for themselves.  But, sadly, a lot of conservatives did not want to see the phoniness.  That would’ve required thinking.  And, unfortunately, a lot of conservatives are abandoning the intellectual battlefield for the comfort of decisions based upon emotion.  If that sounds a lot like the Left, your right.

For those that are not familiar with the term “bait-and-switch”, here is an example.  I once got an offer in the mail.  All that I had to do was attend a seminar about vacation-condo time-shares, and I was guaranteed to win one of five prizes.  All of the prizes had well-known, high-dollar brand names.  So, what could go wrong?

I attended the seminar, found it utterly boring, and realized that it was not for me.  But, I wanted to claim my guaranteed prize.  The presenter told me to go next-door to the office, and I could claim it.  The person in the office told me that I had won a La-Z-Boy chair.  Then, he reached under the counter and handed it to me.  It was not a recliner.  It was a little folding stadium chair!  But, it actually had the La-Z-Boy brand name.  So, technically, they had not lied to me.  They had baited me with a brand that was well-known for $300 recliners (and, that was in the early 1980s), but then they switched and handed me a little chair that cost about 15 dollars.

That is what the Republican Party did to real conservative voters when they trotted out Sarah Palin and told the world that she was a conservative.  Let’s compare the myths to the realities.

One of the biggest factors was the claim that Palin is “pro-life” on the abortion issue.  But, is she really?  During her term as governor of Alaska, what did she do to support a true personhood initiative?  (One was introduced in the Alaska legislature, but it was more than a year after the McCain-Palin ticket had lost the 2008 presidential election, and several months after she had resigned as governor.)  When pinned down on the issue, Palin stated a Libertarian view that was founded upon the “states’ rights” position – much like that of Ron Paul.  At first blush, that might sound good to Tenth Amendment conservatives; but, it totally ignores the inalienable right to life as stated in the Declaration of Independence.  And, it ignores the “due process” principles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment.  Palin’s position is weak logically, weak Constitutionally, and weak in heart.

Then there was the claim that Palin supported border security.  But, if that were true, then why would she have accepted the nomination for vice-president under John McAmnesty McCain?  And, why did she not openly support Tom Tancredo — the founder of the Congressional Border Security Caucus — when he retired from Congress and ran for governor of Colorado.  (When I ran for Congress in 2006, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Rep. Tancredo at a dinner.  He is a genuinely nice man, but a legislative tiger.  His last name means “very believable” in Italian.  That’s a stark contrast with the current occupier of the White House!)

03 March 2006 -- author (left, crew cut) at a dinner with Tom Tancredo

What about her position on globalism?  One need not look any farther than her support for John “let’s stifle all those ‘little people’ out there with ‘campaign reform’” McCain.  But, for those that think I’m resulting to mere “guilt by association”, also consider this.  When she went out “on her own” (ha!) to give an economic speech in Hong Kong (see the first link in this column), Palin was “handled” by a key member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) named Fred Malek.  One does not get the first-class treatment from the CFR unless one has promised to support globalism.  Don’t let her folksy, “aw shucks” stage persona fool you.

Telling title -- "Not Taking Sides" -- the official blog of Sarah Palin's Alaska

Although their public personas differ, there is an odd parallel between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.  Both of them got an inordinate amount of media attention during the 2008 campaign.  Both of them have gone to great effort to craft a media-generated image of themselves.  And, both of those images differ greatly from who they really are!  As I’ve written many times, on many topics, there is no difference between the Big Two political parties.  But, even I was surprised to conclude how little difference there is between the Big Two parties’ big two lightning rods.

Is that by design?

Franklin D. Roosevelt – the author and driving force behind the critical shift of our Federal government away from the Constitution — is credited with saying, “In politics, there are no accidents.”  And, if readers think that I’m being harsh on Sarah Palin, this analysis is mild compared to some interesting points from Left-leaning sources.

A recent story from the Associated Press revealed that Sarah Palin’s TV show might be taxpayer subsidized.  What a contrast:  a TV series purporting “rugged independence”, but subsidized by taxpayers.  (Alaska state taxpayers, by the way.  Given that her series was obviously filmed during the mild season, could this be the real reason that Palin resigned from her position as Alaska’s governor last summer?)  Dipping into the government trough to prop up one’s political persona sounds a lot more like Barack Obama than it does like Ronald Reagan.

The above is still milder than a pre-election 2008 commentary by an admittedly “progressive” column from Knoxville, Tennessee.  That column from Knox Views describes Sarah Palin as a “flaming liberal”.  Coming from a liberal view makes their point-by-point analysis even more intriguing.  The column concludes, “Barack Obama should think about bringing Sarah Palin on board to help promote his socialist agenda.”

It is a rare day when I would agree with a “progressive” columnist about much of anything.  But, when I agree with their analysis of a so-called “conservative” candidate for the White House, that is a classic case of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”.  When one gets past the glasses, the makeup, the hair, and the form-fitting dresses, it becomes easier to agree that Sarah Palin is a bait-and-switch “conservative”.