- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Unlike many of the armchair analysts here who have never been to Alaska, I do know Sarah Palin. And I am stunned at the way the Sarah I know -- the nonpartisan, working-with-Democrats, best-friends-with-Beth Kerttula Sarah -- instantly changed into an attack dog when it suited the McCain campaign's needs and her political ambitions.
As governor, Sarah Palin focused on two major agenda items -- increasing oil-production taxes (our version of a windfall profits tax) and pushing for a natural gas pipeline plan that would result in a system owned and operated independent of the oil producers that dominate Alaska. Her stances on the social issues never affected policy; it was all about oil and gas. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it was a good thing to drastically increase oil-production taxes and forge an independent (non-producer) policy for the gas pipline. Generally, Republicans in Alaska and elsewhere staunchly opposed these ideas. But Democrats favored them. Essentially, Palin signed on to causes that have been pushed by Democrats for years, especially the oil-tax increase. Those causes got nowhere under Murkowski, they went through with a coalition comprising legislative Democrats, a few legislative Republicans and a Big Oil-battling governor (Palin). Ditto for "her" ethics reforms. The wide-ranging ethics bill that she signed was a compilation of previously introduced Democratic bills that had stalled under Murkowski.
While many Republicans question the tax increase and the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act license for TransCanada, you will notice -- if you bother to look up the votes and listen to the recorded debates -- that the biggest champions in the legislature were Democrats. Especially powerful Democrats like Hollis French, now in charge of the legislature's Troopergate investigation. Legislative Democrats and Palin's oil and gas team worked very, very hard on these agenda items (though in retrospect, the governor probably didn't work so hard, but she sure did share in the glory).
Until Aug. 29, in fact, Sarah Palin was not only extremely friendly with her Alaska Democratic allies -- and much in their debt -- she was also saying many nice things about Barack Obama, who was making a good run in Alaska and who was at that point nearly tied with, or even ahead of, John McCain in Alaska. Palin, on the record, praised Obama several times for his attention to Alaska energy issues and for his high-road approach to politics. Many of the people close to Palin declared that they planned to vote for Obama, and even Wally Hickel, perhaps Palin's mentor, wrote a glowing column about Obama in the Anchorage Daily News.
But on Aug. 29, Palin changed. The governor who made a point of being nonpartisan, who forged alliances with Democrats and had better relations with Democrats than she did with Republicans, all of a sudden became a partisan pit bull.
Many Alaskans, myself included, are stunned. And we are wondering if this is part of a career pattern.
And a correction to the writer who asserted that Palin won with 80 percent of the vote: No, she did not. In 2006, she won something like 48 percent to Knowles' 42 percent, and Halcro got about 10 percent. Not exact figures, but close.
Her approval rating had been around 80 percent -- largely due to the oil and gas policies I tried to explain to you non-Alaskans -- but it is widely expected that they have fallen significantly, due to her transformation into a partisan pit bull and her backtracking on her "open and transparent" pledge. She was popular in large part because she was seen as nonpartisan. Now several people I know who voted for her enthusiastically, and who just adored her (including members of my own family) feel enormously betrayed.
But. . .in Sarah's defense, I don't blame her for not contacting Vic Kohring, as he is a pain in the butt and a total idiot.
