Yesterday, I quoted Alex Tabarrok explaining why libertarians should vote for Obama. Now it's Sarah Palin's turn. Here's Radley Balko:[As] a libertarian, there's plenty I like about Palin. I don't agree with many of her culturally conservative positions, but she has for the most part declined to enshrine those views in public policy. Her lack of experience doesn't bother me much at all. Washington's in desperate need of fresh blood and fresh ideas, not the promotion of another five-term senator who's found a permanent home in the Beltway morass.
But what I like about Palin should bother McCain. Palin actually has staked out unorthodox positions on a number of interesting issues, and they're issues that McCain and the Republican base that has embraced her would probably find troubling. Palin's taken a lot of heat, for example, for her (relatively loose) ties with the Alaska Independence Party, an organization that favors a vote on whether the state should secede from the union. Palin has also been friendly with the state's Libertarian Party. Palin's willingness to engage pro-liberty, deeply anti-federal political organizations—even fringe ones—is refreshing. But it's wholly at odds with John McCain's "country first" nationalist fervor.
Palin was also one of just three governors in the country to issue a proclamation in support of "Jurors' Rights" day, an event sponsored by the Fully Informed Jury Association, which encourages the doctrine of jury nullification. Nullification is an idea abhorred by tough-on-crime conservatives.
Palin also comes from a state whose constitution has one of the strongest privacy provisions in the country. Alaska's traditional reverence for privacy and personal autonomy is reflected in a number of issues that would likely be at odds with the national Republican Party—or at least the Bush administration—including a rejection of the Real ID Act, and the de facto decriminalization of marijuana.
Palin supported both the Iraq War and the surge, but in the past she has said she also supports a defined "exit strategy," an approach explicitly rejected by McCain, who has said we may well be in Iraq for decades.
Palin's persona thus far seems to be more in the tradition of Alaska's frontier, individualistic conservatism than John McCain's Weekly Standard-style national greatness conservatism. It's a philosophy that's skeptical of government, instead of what Repubilcans stand for now, which is to embrace government, so long as Republicans are running it.
And she's not just popular among the libertarians. Palin also has broad appeal across the country -- particularly among women of all walks of life.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, Palin does not have the record to prove it.
She took over as Mayor of a small town and left it 20 million dollars in debt. She hired a lobbying firm to steal away as much pork from the federal govt and the American taxpayer as possible.
When running for gov of Alaska she clearly supported the now infamous Bridge to Nowhere project. Only when the political winds shifted did she shift herself.
As gov of Alaska, the state has its biggest budget ever. Also know that Alaska is the biggest recipient per capita of federal pork projects; it's essentially a huge welfare state. Add in oil revenues and it gets to be a lot easier to be governor of Alaska.
She has indeed bucked some of the corrupt political machinery in Alaska, but that's easy to do when the state Republican party is so corrupt. But she is far from clean herself.
Alaska is a beautiful place, but is a world apart from the other mainland 48 states, as the Gov does not have to tackle nearly the same set of issues.
Add in Palin's penchant for lying on the campaign trail, her abuse of power, her even inquiring about banning books, and she looks worse every day.
Palin looks like she's willing to sell her soul to the same Rovian political assassins like McCain has.
It's actually scary to think of her as VP. I'm sure she's a nice person and has a good family, but that's no qualification for VP.
It's funny reading Balko's defense of Palin, as he seems to rely more on how her "persona thus far seems" than anything substantive.
And now in her ABC interview...shockingly the first since her nomination, she states that the US may have to go to war against Russia if Russia invades smaller countries.
So much for libertarianism...
McCain / Palin: 4 more years of less jobs and more war...
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