Sarah Palin has been: busted using Yahoo personal email to go around the requirement of transparency and accountability in government affairs; kicked out of a speaking position at a jewish group’s event on Monday after trying to turn it into a campaign event; pulled off a trip to California; ordered her husband to commit contempt of court, who will likely be charged for this in January when the Alaskan Legislature is in session; caught taking 11 items through the ten-item lane at Wiggly Piggly…
sigh…
You know, this is just getting boring.
I’m tired of hacking at this lifeless corpse, so let’s make it simple. Here’s a list of comments from local bloggers (via Alaska Daily News):
Sen. Lyda Green speaks out on KUDO (Celtic Diva)
I’m paraphrasing here, but these are the main ideas I remember:
The McCain-Palin campaign’s takeover, speaking for Alaska’s government, is a states’ rights issue.
The McCain-Palin campaign’s stonewalling of a bipartisan legislative investigation is creating a constitutional crisis within our state.
Sen. Green is very, very grieved.
Burning bridges in Alaska (Shannyn Moore)
They were visible and in full force at the McCain-Palin press conference yesterday. Alaskans don’t roll that way. People get cranky, even nasty at times, over politics and what they think is best for the state. Alaska lawmakers are sitting in federal prison for selling their votes, and it wasn’t this nasty. The McCain-Palin ticket has become a poster child for partisan politics on steroids. On No. 5, the day after this election, the shrapnel of this campaign will be strewn across Alaska. It’s going to take Dr. Phil and a few Barry White albums to get the healing started.
Palin running scared: Flip-flops on Troopergate (Kodiak Konfidential)
Palin throws Alaskans under the bus (Mudflats)
This is not going over well in Alaska. I’ll use my usual caveat that there are lots of Alaskans who happily subscribe to the “Sarah right or wrong” mentality and will continue to do so. However, the progressive take on this whole latest mess is only slightly short of taking torches and pitchforks and surrounding the attorney general’s office, demanding an end to the stonewalling. I’ve watched Alaskan progressives that I personally know go from saying, “Wow! I can’t believe I voted for a Republican!” to, “She’s doing OK. I don’t agree with everything, but I don’t regret my vote” to being so furiously seething angry they just can’t say anything.
This means that there’s a shift, and shifts tend to bring along all people to a certain degree. If there’s one way to tick off Alaskans it’s by bringing in “outsiders” to try to control state affairs. Imagine if you will how a small independent nation would feel being invaded by the superpower next door. It’s like that.
Rep. Les Gara on Troopergate (Huffington Post)
Over the next few days McCain’s folks will try to get local legislators to step in line, out of party loyalty, and reverse their vote to investigate Troopergate. But many local Republicans, like Senate president Lyda Green, have so far refused to play those politics. Stay for more from McCain’s campaign for “Change.” They’ve tried to change the truth. They’ve succeeded at changing Gov. Palin’s promise to comply with this investigation. Let’s see what they’ll change next.
Sarah, stop the slander (Alaska Real)
I honestly am just so frustrated with what Gov. Palin has been doing and saying, I cannot write what I was going to write. What she is attempting to do with Walt Monegan – shift the blame and public disgust to him rather than be “open” and “welcome the investigation” as she has repeatedly promised in the past – is just beyond disgust to me.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Palin (Wall Street Journal Opinion)
“We were trying to make headlines for 50 years in Alaska, since we became a state,” she joked. “What it took was Sarah Palin. . . . I’ve called her the Sarah phenomenon.” Ms. Murkowski, however, does grant the governor her reputation as an agent of change: “She didn’t care who she ticked off. I’ve told my colleagues, ‘Don’t underestimate this woman.’ . . . She’s not afraid to challenge. It may be bold. It may be crazy.”
Ms. Murkowski says nonetheless a certain amount of hype has tinged press accounts of Mrs. Palin’s rise. “There was a need to clean things up” in Alaska, she says. But Gov. Palin came into office when a federal criminal investigation of local lawmakers was already under way. “She rode that wave.”
Ivan Moore: Is what you see what you get? (Anchorage Press)
Was the prior reality the real reality? Or is this one? Or are they both? Is the act of observation – the very, very intense observation on the national stage-a fundamental reason for the changes we’re seeing? Bottom line, has the level of observation that is par for the course now, the mainstream media, the tabloids, the Internet press, the blogs and the public all acting in concert, gotten us to the point where we can’t observe reality in our presidential and vice presidential candidates? Are we eternally doomed to being unable to truly know who these people are?
Wasilla residents speak out on Palin (Alaska Journal of Commerce)
As mayor of Wasilla from October 1996 to October 2002, Palin presided over a budget that rose from $7.6 million to $13.6 million. Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodworth, an accountant in private practice, said Palin was not conservative with the city budget.
“The true test of a leader is when there is not a lot of money and you have to work across the aisle,” Woodworth said. “Likewise, when she was mayor of Wasilla, we were in a time of prosperity. I’ve never seen her pushed when a lot of resources weren’t there.”
Halcro on Talis Colberg (Halcro.com)
From conducting a pre-investigation investigation, to recusing himself due to a conflict to reinserting himself right back into the middle to getting on a plane for a vacation in the middle of one of the biggest legal controversies the attornery general’s office has handled in recent history, Colberg more and more appears out of his league.
Plucked from the relative obscurity of drawing up wills in Palmer to managing one of the biggest legal staffs in the state, Colberg’s latest actions show he is certainly not ready for prime time.
8 comments