Michael Zucker: Palin's loyalty: to America, Alaska, or self?

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Michael Zucker

Senator John McCain's campaign has morphed into a tragic cartoon with its lead character: his mockable running mate Alaska governor Sarah Palin. There's an irony here. She has been hurling false policy attributes and insinuations of anti-Americanism at Barack Obama and his supporters. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that her own political history is corrupt and morally bankrupt.

This wicked witch of the north falsely accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists." The Republican vice-presidential nominee, who likes to wink but insists she will never blink, recently said that she enjoyed visiting "pro America parts of the country," implying that our geography is split between the good guys and anti-Americans.

The McCain-Palin campaign has continuously flaunted the ridiculous charge that Obama is closely associated with William Ayers, a 1960s radical who engaged in violent acts when the senator was eight years old. Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers are not friends. No one has ever been able to cite advocacy of violence attributable to Mr. Obama. While the media has for the past several weeks continuously conveyed these guilt-by-association suggestions propelled by the McCain people, there's been scant attention paid to Ms. Palin's dark associations. Let's take a look at who SHE has been palling around with -- the Alaskan Independence Party.

That party's Web site states a goal of giving Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union and become an independent nation. AIP 's founder and original chairman was one Joe Vogler, who set the party's creed by declaring "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." He also said "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand (and)... when the (federal) bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets...I hate them with a passion. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die."

In 1993, Vogler, seeking to address the United Nations for support for his Alaskan independence views, was sponsored by Iran, the country that Senator McCain insists is off limits for diplomatic discussions!

Sarah Palin, campaigning to be the U.S. vice-president under the slogan "Country First," has a direct and current connection to the AIP whose motto is "Alaska First, Alaska Always." She told this year's convention that Alaska has "great promise to be a self-sufficient state" and urged the audience to "keep up the good work."

Dexter Clark, the party's current vice chairman, told its convention that military people stationed in Alaska were occupying troops and suggested they were imposing foreign rule on the state. He affirmed that Palin was a party member before she became mayor of Wasilla, and that she joined the Republican Party because "you get along to go along (to advance an agenda)," that (Palin) is "pretty well sympathetic to her former membership"; he also advocated infiltrating "whichever party (in the area) you can get something done... (like getting) a few people on a city council..."

Lynette Clark, Dexter's wife and current party chair, has said both Sarah and her husband Todd were party members in 1994 when Lynette was party secretary. In a September press release, she reversed herself on Sarah, but it's curious that the reversal came only after Sarah was selected as McCain's running mate! That Todd Palin was a member between 1995 and 2002 is not disputed. Lynette Clark told ABC News that the AIP challenges the legality of Alaska's statehood vote, and that she believes Alaska should be an independent nation.

Our mainstream media should pay more attention to examining Sarah Palin's true political loyalties than it does to disproved insinuations about Barack Obama.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Michael Zucker
South Lake Tahoe, CA

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