Palin: The Most Extremist Candidate Since Goldwater

Sarah Palin is the most extremist major party candidate since Barry Goldwater, aligned with the most far right wing elements in American politics on issues ranging from denying that human activity has helped bring about global warming, to seeking to block protection of endangered species, to advocating the teaching of creationism in the public schools, to opposing abortion even in the case of rape and incest, to preventing teenagers from learning about contraception in school, to advocating drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, to flirting with Alaska voting to secede from the Union, to proclaiming our troops in Iraq are on a mission from God.

Moderates, centrists and independents need to be made aware of these positions and consider whether they want to elect someone with such extremist views to the second highest political office in the land, a heartbeat away from the Presidency of a 72 year old cancer survivor.

Moreover, they should questions John McCain's judgment and claims to be a moderate and a maverick within the Republican Party when he caved in to pressure from the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party to choose someone with the thin resume and extremist views of Sarah Palin to stand second in line to the Presidency.

Palin's nomination marks a decision by McCain to try to turn the election from one about the economy to a replay of past elections about cultural issues and about which candidate represents real Americans. If Republicans can make the election about cultural imagery and who is more of a "real American"--focusing voters minds on the war hero and the hockey mom--they may well win. But when it comes to the specific issues of the culture wars, the religious right represents a minority of voters and their positions scare many moderates and independents. Democrats need to focus on Palin's extremism on the issues and McCain's endorsement of such extremism by choosing Palin to stand a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Here are some examples of of Palin's extremist ideology which the McCain campaign wants to hide and Democrats must expose:

* Palin does not believe in science.

** Palin does not believe that global warming is caused by human activity. In an interview for the September issue of the conservative magazine Newsmax, Palin said"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

** Gov. Palin recently sued Bush's own Interior Secretary for determining, based on the scientific evidence, that the polar bear is an endangered species. Documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Alaska's state biologist agrees with the science of Bush's Interior Department, not Palin. "She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading," according to Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming. The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by deny this."

** Palin believes that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public schools. "Teach both," she said in a forum while running for Governor. Palin's statement closely mirrors the language of "Teach the Controversy", the slogan of the intelligent design campaign, under which evolution's "unresolved issues" and the "scientific weakness of evolutionary theory" would be presented alongside intelligent design concepts in public schools. This despite the fact that in 2005, the Federal District Court ruled in Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, that teaching intelligent design in public school sciences course violates the establishment clause in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.

* Palin is part of the most extreme wing of the anti-abortion and abstinence only movement. This should particularly worry moderate suburban women.

** In response to a questionnaire from the far-right Eagle Forum, Palin responded that she opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest. While a Gubernatorial candidate, Palin stated that if her then 14-year old daughter were raped, she would not permit her to have an abortion. This places Palin on the far right of the anti-abortion movement. Even many pro-life supporters agree that abortion should be permitted in these extreme circumstances, Sarah Palin disagrees. In fact, when a majority of the legislature in the heavily pro-life state of South Dakota recently put an abortion ban on the ballot which would band abortion even in cases of rape or incest, many pro-lifers opposed the ban and it was defeated by the voters.

** In answer to another Eagle Forum question, Palin stated that she supports schools funding "abstinence-until-marriage" education and opposes schools funding sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools.

** There are serious questions whether Palin even believes in birth control. While in general, a candidate's personal family decisions should be outside the realm of political discussion, the pregnancy of Palin's 17-year old daughter raises questions about Palin's beliefs on birth control. Palin is a member of the deceptively named "Feminists for Life" who would criminalize not only abortion but the IUD and hormonal birth control methods (e.g. the pill). Although Palin's decision to keep and raise a baby with Down's syndrome may be admirable, the same questions are raised by Palin herself, already the mother of 4 other children, becoming pregnant at age 44. Palin is lucky that her failure to educate her daughter about contraception only led to an out of wedlock pregnancy. It could have led her to contract a sexually transmitted disease.

** Palin's answer to the Eagle Forum questionnaire also reflected other extremist views. She supports the right of parents to block their public school children from reading books or participating in curricula and classes which disagree with their religious beliefs. (This is consistent with Palin's firing of the Wasilla town librarian for refusing to remove books to which Palin objected from library shelves.) Palin is against expanding hate crime laws. She opposes the decision of the Alaska Supreme Court according spousal benefits to same-sex couple who are state employees.

* Far from putting "Country First", Palin has been closely associated with the far-right wing whack job Alaska Independence Party which questions the legality of the vote for Alaska to join the union and wants to hold a referendum for Alaska to secede. Just 6 months ago, Palin gave a speech to the AIP conventions calling on them to "keep up the good work" and wished the party luck on what she called its "inspiring convention." Palin's husband was an AIP member for 7 years until 2002 and she and her husband both attended AIP's 2000 Convention. AIP founder Joe Vogler said "I'm an Alaskan, not an American...I've got no use for America". There is evidence that Vogler was connected to domestic terrorism--He died in a plastic-explosives sale gone bad.

* Palin seems to believe that she knows God's will and that he is on the side of Republican political positions. She has said that the US sending troops to fight in Iraq is a "task that is from God". She called the building of a $30 million natural gas pipeline in Alaska "God's will." One can debate the pros and cons of these political positions, but claiming unique knowledge of God's will in human affairs is scary and contrasts sharply with the views of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed, "Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side."

* Palin has close political and religious ties to theocratic groups which do not believe in the First Amendment's separation of church and state and want America ruled by biblical law rather than the Constitution. Many of these groups are associated with Dominionism, an extreme religious ideology which, according to journalist Frederick Clarkson shares the following beliefs:

"1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation...2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity. 3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that...'biblical law' should be the foundation of American law."

** This Dominionist ideology is consistent with Palin's statement that she was the first "Christian Mayor of Wasilla", which was objected to by the prior Mayor of Wasilla who was also a Christian, must not one of Palin's denomination.

** Right before McCain selected Palin, she was vetted for McCain at a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, whose members include such leading Dominionists as Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Tim LeHaye, author of the apocalyptic "Left Behind" books which predict the coming rapture in which true Christians will be instantly transported from earth to heaven and while the rest of humanity will be left to face plagues and pestilence on earth. After this vetting, Dobson, who once said he would "never" vote for McCain, issued a statement hailing Palin as an "outstanding" choice. It is reported that McCain caved in to the Council for National Policy in choosing Palin, after they unequivocally rejected his more moderate first choices of pro-choice candidates Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman.

** Palin's home church, the Juneau Christian Center, and its pastor Mike Rose advocates Dominionsim and is closely connected to the Dominionist movement. Rose is an advisor to Rodney Howard-Browne's Revival Ministries, one of the leading Dominionist organizations. Palin's church is also connected with the "Joel's Army" movement which uses stealth methods to recruit teens to the cause. One cannot definitely connect Palin to these extreme politico-religious views, but she certainly has her own "Pastor problem".

These views place Palin on the extreme right-wing of the American political spectrum and should raise serious concerns among moderate, centrist and independent voters. The McCain campaign will try to bury these views behind a rosy picture of an all-American hockey mom and mother of five with a Downs Syndrome baby. Despite Republican attacks on media coverage of Palin, the media seems to be focusing on the personal aspects of Palin's story and not the issues.

Democrats need to inform swing voters, in particular, of Palin's extremist views and McCain's caving in to the extreme right wing of the Republican Party in choosing her. If they are fully informed, centrist, moderate and independent voters are likely to think twice about voting to put Palin a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Comments

[marcparella]

I am a conservative in the grand tradition of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater. I live in San Francisco and own a home in Phoenix. I am an Atheist. I like Palin. She is refreshingly candid and seems to actually believe in what she is advocating. I don't fear her views or her religious affiliation. I like Obama too for the same reason even if I disagree somewhat on his platform.

I am old enough to remember Goldwater. For those of you who think he was some trigger-happy anti-communist racist who couldn't wait to start a war with Russia, you have been sadly duped. Mr. Goldwater was revered by members of both parties. Jimmy Carter in a private note exclaimed to Goldwater: "You must count me as one of your great admirers". Goldwater championed ideas as well as opposed ideas, instead of the current political trend of trashing people who happen to think differently. He did more for Civil Rights in Arizona than Johnson did in Texas, (the first integrated National Guard Unit in the US was establish in Arizona by Goldwater in 1946) or for that matter, the whole country. And above all else, he believed in the undiscovered potential of the individual. Our Nation's most-distinguish scholarship for college science students is the Barry Morris Goldwater Scholarship in Science and Technology. It was established by an unanimous vote by the United States Senate in 1986.

[ZsaZsa]

Two points here:

1. To say Palin is the most extreme candidate since Goldwater is an insult to Goldwater. She's far worse.

2. It's not that her views on "social and cultural" issues are outside the mainstream, it's just that people don't realize how dangerous those views are. They think it would be great if no one got abortions. They think it would be great if their kids got to hear "both sides" of the "debate" over the origins of life. They think it would be great if they could choose which books their kids read and don't read in school. They don't see the downsides of these. They don't see that criminalizing abortion will lead to more welfare moms. They don't see that messing with school curricula will make our children less competitive when they grow up. Maybe the best thing that could happen is if someone like this does get power, then once everyone sees how bad these ideas are, we will see a swing to the left like we've never seen before.

[MajorKong]

Pretty much all they've got left is culture wars. Unfortunately it seems to work for them.

[elizaW]

Just so you know, in retrospect Goldwater is now viewed as a hero and not just with Republicans. There's even a HBO documentary about him. Goldwater is cool again.

[suzonne]

I was disappointed that Obama didn't announce some of his other cabinet member appointments for the DNC convention, but now would be a good time also.

It could put the ball back in his court especially if one of those appointments is one of the highly qualified democratic women he has to choose.

[looking4thelight]

I was walking through a big box store and I saw one picture of Obama and his family one one magazine cover and one of Palin one another. I said to my sister...."at least they each have a cover". Then immediately, a lady who was about 60 stopped and wanted to tell me what a WONDERFUL woman she was. She was reciting all the lines the Republicans were taught to say in the first few days. I was shocked how sincere and strong she was. If there are many more people like this who will actually be going to the polls...........So eager to accept the whole package and not question at all.


How is Senator Biden going to use his wisdom against this? I hope his great sense of humor will come through in the debates so that he won't just be a guy talking facts. Biden's so sharp but so is Gore and look how that folksy "I'm your friend" tactic worked before for the Republicans. Senator Biden will be a great Vice President. It's a dangerous world out there and I am angry at McCain for choosing someone who is just a puppet to the extreme groups and big oil.

No Palin! No Way!

[bcagerry]

This is straight out of Alice in Wonderland. McCain is the White Rabbit, and Palin is the Red Queen. Can we please get some reality back into this election?

[kaygee]

Voter behavior during the Democratic Primary programmed McCain's pick of Palin. He watched Democrats gradually yield to the siren song of change. He got a young relatively inexperience candidate and he dropped his experience argument for change. Why should voter behavior be any different now than it was last fall. The one person who was really ready got eliminated : Hillary Clinton.

[justobserve]

Maybe she can replace Obama now! Sadly, some voters are still not ready to vote a black to be their president and they may tilt the balance! Democrat must win or universal health care will be pushed back decade so we would be the only first-world country to be without one.
Vote for issues, not beauty nor lies: AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE, WOMEN'S CHOICE, VETS BENEFITS, EQUAL PAY.

[cobraxus]

Dear PUMA Kaygee,I've voted for Hillary Clinton twice(as senator for NYS).Yes,I would've loved to see her as President but that fact remains her campaign was a mess(thanks Mark Penn)and democratic voters went with Barrack Obama.Please support him,he's closer to your views than McCain/Palin.If it's really worth it to you to throw this election(either out of resentment,spite of hopes for 2012)then you're really no better than the Southern Democrats who voted for Nixon or worse the low-information voters who elected GWB TWICE!

[SDindependent]

It is Sunday, McBush has Palin sequestered, she is not allowed to take a singe question from anyone. According to the lobbyist that runs his campaign, Rick Davis she will not be interviewed until she is ready..... "READY". What the hell is this. She is not READY to answer a question from a reporter but she is READY to step in and take over the presidency.

This has got to be the most ominous scam on the American public since the Bush-Cheny Iraq War on WMD's claim.

[charon]

Palin has no regard for laws. She rules from her gut, hires and fires people according to personal whim. She is a grave danger to the rule of Constitutional law in this country, already attenuated by bushco a cowardly Congress afraid to impeach.

[jbg]

My problem is that I am not hearing enough in the media about her views. I am only heaing about how people in the middle of the country identify with her. The Obama campaign is not talking about it much either, and they really need to start doing so. This is one extreme candidate who would incredible harm to the country.

[DanoS1]

I hate false rumors as much as anyone, but can a member of the press please confirm why Sara Plain is not at least 7 months pregnant in this public, unaltered Governors photo taken with President Bush in February 2008?

Her baby was supposedly born on April 18, 2008.

http://www.subnet.nga.org/centennial/2008Meeting.htm (Feb, 2008)

This photo is from March 14th 2008, where she clearly is not pregnant:

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0fcQ5EM7gafd9

Finally, she is also on the cover of December issue of Vogue which was taken December 12, 2007. She should have been 4-5 months preganant. Clearly shes not.

Reportedly, her water broke the day before or hours before she gave birth in Texas and flew 8 hour to Alaska in labor? Would a doctor/ the airline allow this? Something isn't adding up?

[thefirehorse]

I don't care how you dress Palin-McCain, they are more of the same old politics that we have seen from the Republicans even if they try to run away from it.

[usnvet1983]

AWWW , THAT SARAH PALIN, SHE IS SO SWEET, CARING FOR THE UNBORN AND ALL, AND BEING PRO LIFE......WELL AT LEAST UNTIL IT COMES TO LIVING THINGS WITH 4 LEGS, THEN THIS WOMAN HAS NO REGARD AT ALL FOR GOD'S CREATURES....SHE IS FOR THE AERIEL HUNTING OF WOLVES, WHICH BASICALLY MEANS HUNTERS CHASE DOWN WOLVES WITH SMALL PLANES UNTIL THEY ARE EXHAUSTED AND THEN LAND THE PLANE AND KILL THE WOLVES. SHE IS ALSO FOR HAVING POLAR BEARS REMOVED FROM THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST, AND HOW MANY MORE PHOTOS MUST I SEE OF THIS WONDERFUL WOMAN POSING PROUDLY AND SMILING WHILE STANDING NEXT TO A BLOODY MOOSE OR OTHER ANIMAL SHE HAS JUST KILLED. UNLESS YOU NEED TO HUNT TO PUT FOOD ON YOUR TABLE, THE ONLY OTHER REASON TO DO IT WOULD BE BECAUSE YOU GET OFF ON KILLING. YEP, HER AND MCCAIN WILL MAKE A GREAT TEAM





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[Canukistani]

Listening to what she says in her speeches may just be enough even without interviews. Judging by what she's said so far in this campaign with all this talk of being tough and pit bulls and such, it seems that she believes the country needs to continue down the aggressive and arrogant path that's won the US so many new friends in the world in these last few years. At least, that appears to be her mindset.

[arthur2008]

Let's remember that the war will be fought on mnay fronts. As a white American of Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland's generation (but not his district), I am apalled by his Old South efforts to inflame racist fears by calling Sen. Barack Obama "uppity," among other ugly, coded comments.

Like Westmoreland, I have vivid memories of the Civil Rights struggles and the shameful oppression we witnessed in our early lives. Unlike him, I drew different lessons from the experience.

Today, he would like us to believe that his comments did not reflect racist code or his own concealed contempt for every American who differs from him, in race, gender or ideology. I think few of us will or can believe that.

It brings shame on our nation to be represented by such a man. Fortunately, his opponent has shown the grace and courage to call his remarks what they are. I have already made my donation to defeat the reprehensible racism of the past. Please join me in this by making even a small contribution to Stephen Camp, the young attorney from Newnan, Georgia, who is running against Westmoreland.

Mr. Camp's website is: http://www.stephencampforcongress.com/

(And please forward this message widely!)

Thanks.

[nerakami]

** Palin does not believe that global warming is caused by human activity."
========================================================

Maybe this anti-Mother Earth person should come and live in Florida for a year and FEEL the effects of
a strong hurricanes which are becoming more and more frequent and more and more devastating...

BUT, the Universe has a way to deal with those who do not try to work in harmony with the earth...
watch out Palin.... Karma is upon you....