Maybe the new slogan should be “Alaska first.”
ABC News is reporting that Sarah Palin was once a member Alaskan Independence Party. The party’s platform has long had a plank advocating a vote in Alaska on whether to secede from the United States.
Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which since the 1970s has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.
And while McCain’s motto — as seen in a new TV ad — is “Country First,” the AIP’s motto is the exact opposite — “Alaska First — Alaska Always.”
Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.
“We are a state’s rights party,” Clark — a self-employed goldminer — tells ABC News. The AIP has “a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law.”
This may amount to nothing, but it’s astonishing that the McCain campaign was not prepared for this stuff. She better have a good explanation for this.
As Josh Marshall and other bloggers have been reporting, it’s clear now that the McCain camapign did not vet Palin thoroughly before making this pick. They are now sending a team of lawyers to Alaska to do damage control and work on the vetting process that should have been completed before the pick was made.
Frankly, this raises the question of McCain’s fitness for the presidency. There are many legitimate questions regarding his temperment and his shoot-from-the-hip style. The more we learn about the process (or lack of process) behind this pick, the more it looks like a reckless decision.
UPDATE: The McCain camapign is claiming that Sarah Palin was not a member of this party, though reports suggest her husband may have been a member, and she did a video presentation at their convention this year. In any event, it took them several days to address this, and Sarah Palin herself still has net made herself available for any interviews to answer questions.
