Many pixels and barrels of ink have been spilled over Sarah Palin since Senator McCain picked her to be his running mate. Undoubtedly, his campaign expected her to revive his chances by adding pizzazz to the ticket and energizing the religious and traditionalist bases. They must have also secretly wished that the "angry left" would be up in arms over this anti-feminist, and would attack her on the many obvious target points. For this, she was perfect, a big, fat, floating target to draw fire from "the left".
But what do we need to do to keep her (and her ancillary running mate) from taking office? That isn’t so obvious, and needs us to think carefully about the strategy of our response. We need to sift through all the possible lines of attack and pick out the one(s) that will actually defeat this threat. For that, I suggest that we start by concentrating on the thing that will do the most to split the Republican faithful, her history as a colossal waster of public funds.
I recently received a copy of a letter by Anne Kilkenny, a resident of Wasilla, with a lot of information about Palin. This letter seems to be spreading on the Internet. I don’t have any special way of validating it, but I’m going to take it at face value. Much of it agrees with what we’ve seen in other venues.
The important part for me is the parts about Palin’s approach to spending the public money. Here are some pertinent parts:
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a fiscal conservative. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.
As for her tenure as governor:
As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects—which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance—but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork".
She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
One of the most important tenets of Republican ideology is fiscal conservatism. Palin has none of this. She is, just on the record, a political opportunist, who uses "conservatism" to get elected and then becomes another dictatorial money source for greedy businessmen. She is perfectly capable of taking a small city, like Wasilla, and running it steeply into debt in order to further her own ambitions and pay off a few powerful friends.
The most important thing about Palin, in my opinion, is how she can be used to divide people who would vote Republican. Her stands on the social issues divide the electorate and may separate sensible voters from whacko right-wingers, but they won’t divide our political opposition. Her sneaky, self-serving, ruthlessness may put off voters of all stripes, but it may also appeal to the Republican base, which seems to value toughness over being smart. But her actual performance in office as a person who wipes out fiscal responsibility wherever she goes is incredibly off-putting to anyone who really thinks that government should be smaller. You can’t drown government in a bathtub if you keep bloating it until it’s too big to fit even in Alaska.
We should be pounding on this every day. Palin cut taxes for the rich while soaking the poor with heavier taxes, just like George Bush did. Sales tax is tax. And it is class warfare, increasing taxes on the poor to support tax cuts for the rich. Palin created debt, just like George Bush. Debt is tax. It’s the worst kind of tax because it is tax levied on future generations to pay for self-indulgence. Sarah Palin is the next incarnation of George Bush. They have the same personalities and the same track record. Their experience as one-term governors who left financial problems behind to seek higher office is the same experience. They are the examples of how to be a bad executive. They are the examples of how to manipulate the public by hoodwinking the Christian right into voting for them, then using their office to help rich people maintain their unfair shares of the public good. Sarah Palin is George Bush with lipstick.
And Senator McCain’s choice of Palin tells us where he’s going in this administration. Here’s what he’s saying to the people of this country:
"I’m willing to lie to you to get in office."
"I’m not popular, but I have a magic trick to hide behind until I take office."
"I’m going to show you the velvet glove so you can’t see the steel hand."
"I’m not concerned about fiscal responsibility."
"I do care about keeping the money flowing to the rich."
"I don’t care about ethics in government."
"Everything I did for ethics reform and fiscal responsibility was just for show."
"Once you elect me, expect your burdens to continue because nothing will change."
The main line of attack here is that McCain will not bring fiscal responsibility. Republicans, for all their talk about it, don’t know how. Once they get in office, they have no restraint and will go straight for the money—like a barracuda. McCain has no record of actually running an executive, and the person he picked to show how he’d run it—Sarah Palin—would run it into the ground.
We should use this as the fixing force. We should hammer on this as the frontal assault on their ground, making them defend their fiscal conservatism. Meanwhile, we can swing around and attack them on other issues, such as how they misuse their power to get rid of competent people in government and substitute loyalists. The two attacks complement each other, and you can swing back and forth between them easily. They tie McCain to his flawed choice for VP, and they tie both of them to the Bush Administration.
And McCain can’t escape. At one time he may have been a maverick, and he may well still want to reform his party. But he has shown us the truth behind the façade. If he had any intention of reforming the party, he can’t do it. He’s still beholden to their interests because he’s embedded in the Republican Party and the Republican Party is in bed with the businesses that corrupt government. McCain still isn’t free.