Front Sight, Press

…and she’s a lifetime member of the NRA. What’s not to like?

She hunts and fishes.
Her hubby is an Alaska native and he works on the North Slope for BP ("Drill here, Drill Now!").

Biden is a crummy insider.
Palin is about as "outside" as it gets (and she’s better looking, never needed a hair transplant and hasn’t plagiarized anybody).

She is a reformer.
She has a child with Downs Syndrome, meaning she will be seen as a strong advocate for Americans with disabilities.

And, by adding a woman to the ticket, John McCain may indeed have taken a huge block of women away from the Obamacrats.

She has executive experience, more than Barack Obama.

Head over to Xavier for some Palin video

‘Suburban mom’ who took on her own party

By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Denver

 

Sarah Palin made the leap from being a small town mayor to governor of Alaska two years ago by vowing to reform a party that was imbued with corruption and tainted by its cosy ties to the oil industry.

The meteoric rise of Alaska’s first female governor, a mother of five who is a conservative Christian, soared to even greater heights on Friday after John McCain, Republican presidential candidate, chose Ms Palin as his running mate.

In some ways, the choice reflects Mr McCain’s own narrative of being an outsider within his own party, a politician who chooses country first with “grit, integrity, and good sense”.

Ms Palin became governor in 2006 by defeating Frank Murkowski, the sitting governor, in the Republican party primary. In that race she portrayed herself as a reformer, an agent of change amid a state Republican party whose most senior members were under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Attacks by her Democratic opponent that she lacked the skills to negotiate with oil companies to build a new natural gas pipeline, fell flat. Voters connected with her image as a “suburban mom” who ran marathons and liked to hunt and fish.

She stood out for accusing Randy Ruedrich, the chairman of the state Republican party and a member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, of misusing his office for political gains. 

In her gubernatorial run, she stressed her abilities to build consensus among diverse groups and work with competing interests.

But Ms Palin’s tenure has not been without controversy. A state investigation is probing allegations that Ms Palin fired Alaska’s public safety commissioner because he did not fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper engaged in a child custody fight with Ms Palin’s sister. The vice-presidential pick has admitted that a member of her staff called another trooper, in a move that might have applied pressure to fire her former brother-in-law, but said she did not authorise the call.

Ms Palin’s personal story is also compelling. After completing her first year in office, the mother of four, who was pregnant with her fifth, was told her child had Down’s Syndrome. Three days after she gave birth the governor returned to work in Anchorage with her baby son and husband.

“It’s a sign of the times to be able to do this,” she told the Associated Press. “I can think of so many male candidates who watched families grow while they were in office. There is no reason to believe a woman can’t do it with a growing family. My baby will not be at all or in any sense neglected.”

Before becoming governor, Ms Palin was mayor of Wasilla, a town with 9,000 inhabitants, a position she held from 1996 to 2002, before being named chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Source: FT.com