Update on Sarah Palin’s Extremist Associations

Newspaper reports yesterday quoted the chairwoman of the Alaska Independence Party as saying Sarah Palin was a member. Today she has retracted her statement that Palin was a member.

While it appears that Sarah Palin herself was not a member, her husband Todd was a member until 2002 (when Sarah began to seek state-wide office running for lieutenant governor). Via Ezra Klein we also found that the AIP is the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party. The Constitution Party is a far right theocratic organization which seeks to place the country under Biblical law.

The McCain campaign was therefore correct when they denied Palin’s membership in hte AIP. However Palin has spoken before this group expressing support for their views and her husband was an actual member. Imagine if Michelle Obama was found to have been a member of such an extremist group on the left and that Barack had similarly spoken before such a group expressing support for their views.

We don’t even need to go that far. Obama has been attacked by the right (along with the Clinton campaign which used tactics indistinguishable from those of the right) for serving on a bipartisan board with sixties radical William Ayers despite having condemned the extremist actions performed by Ayers when Obama was eight years old.

The previous reports that Palin supported Patrick Buchanan are also in doubt. Patrick Buchanan has stated that she was a supporter of his third party campaign after old news stories surfaced showing Palin wearing a Buchanan badge. Palin claims that appearing in public wearing such a badge, as well as speaking to the AIP, do not indicate support for such groups but that she was merely welcoming such groups to her city.

Again return to the Barack Obama test. If Obama wore the badge of a far left third party candidate visiting Illinois, or if he spoke before such a group, how would the right wing interpret this? Maybe Palin was just being an exuberant hostess, but I remain concerned by the manner in which this has occurred with extremists such as Patrick Buchanan and the AIP. Has Palin had any similar appearances with groups which support defense of our civil liberties, which support abortion rights, or which defend our heritage of separation of church and state?

9 Comments

  1. 1
    Misty says:

    It seems incredibly hypocritical that liberals, who have always claimed to champion women’s rights, would go after Sarah Palin the way you have.  It is as if the liberal media has become paparazzi, trying to dig up any piece of negative press you can find and printing it before you check your facts.  I believe all of this will back fire on you.  This will energize women in the Republican party….it will energize the McCain campaign.  And we will have the chance to see the liberal media for who they are–hypocrites who are afraid of a strong Republican woman. 

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Misty, This has absolutely nothing to do with women’s rights. Nor is this being anything like paparazzi.

    When a  72-year-old presidential candidate picks a vice presidential candidate who has extremist views which I find abhorrent and who is the least qualified individual on a major party ticket in a century this is worthy of discussion. She is hardly a “strong Republican woman.” She’s an extremist kook who is unqualified to be on a major party ticket.

    We would have the same criticism of Palin if she was a male. The hypocrite is you who argue that we should judge her by a different standard than we would judge a male candidate.

  3. 3
    Derek says:

    Actually, Palin has more experience than Obama, and she is the vice-presidential candidate, not the presidential candidate!  Who is calling the kettle black?

  4. 4
    Ben says:

    This defiantly has nothing to do with women’s rights. Nor does it have anything to do with her daughter. I was at first thrilled with McCain’s choice, a female republican VP seems rather progressive. I could careless that her teenage unwed daughter was pregnant. You just can not control your kids actions unless you lock them away. My concern comes from her connections to a party that hates the U.S. and her environmentally unfriendly polices. If you don’t believe it atleast check out akip.org, look at the Q and A section, there is a rather nasty response in regards to losing citizenship. The more I research on her the more I dislike her. The last of which is where she was paying $150 per wolf head in action to increase hunting game.

    Just because someone calls themselves a republican or democrat does not mean you have to support them. Nor does it mean if someone is black, white, brown, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, female, male, gay, straight, or what ever you are too you have to support them. Support those that best support your views.

  5. 5
    Ron Chusid says:

    On the surface picking a female sounded rather progressive but Palin was on the short list of people I saw as possibilities and checked up on. I didn’t have her anywhere near the top of my predictions, but I saw her as an outside chance based upon the support for her from  many conservatives (and surprisingly, libertarians). Therefore I knew from the start that she was on the far right and was very disappointed.

    From an electoral point of view we might be happy as this increases the chances of Obama winning, but from a pragmatic point of view John McCain’s running mate has a  very real chance of winding up becoming president. Therefore I would prefer to see more moderate and competent Republican candidates so that the country would be better off regardless of who wins the election.

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    Derek,

    Actually Palin has a small fraction of the experience Obama has. Obama has been dealing with national issues and Constitutional issues on various levels for several years.

    Palin has about twenty months as governor of a small state (population wise) where she had much less exposure to national issues than Obama did. She had very limited experience related to national politics in a town as small as Wasilla, other than going after earmarks.

    The attempts of the McCain campaign to claim experience for her haven’t panned out too well as reporters have revealed how little exposure she actually had to issues of consequence.

    If you want someone who knows how to issue ice fishing permits, Palin is your candidate. If you want a president who knows about health care, Iraq, or Constitutional law, then Obama has considerably more exposure to these issues.

  7. 7
    Eddie says:

    Sarah Palin is definitely wrong on the Iraq war. No wonder McCain chose her. She is also lied about originally supporting the bridge to nowhere. And if her husband is a part of A.I.P believe me the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

  8. 8
    Sara says:

    Misty said:
    September 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am It seems incredibly hypocritical that liberals, who have always claimed to champion women’s rights, would go after Sarah Palin the way you have.

    Misty-I’m a woman and feminist and am against Palin. I don’t care about her gender, I care that she believes some truly nutty things. She doesn’t believe global warming is “man-made,” she thinks creationism should be taught in schools, she believes in abstinence-only sex education, she’s anti-choice, even in cases of rape and incest,  etc. She’s an extremist- a far-far right evangelical republican.

  9. 9
    Sara says:

    For anyone claiming that the pick of Sarah Palin represents a triumph for women and women’s rights, read what more than 100,000 women — of ALL ages, classes, and political affiliations — have to say about her at womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com

3 Trackbacks

Leave a comment