This is my first diary so I hope at least one person reads it.
Ms Palin has some splainin to do, Lucy about the strange company she keeps up there in the frozen tundra. Specifically, her friends in the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) claim her as one of theirs.
After last week's shock and awe pronouncement of the Palin pick, I've been reading a progressive Alaskan blog, Mudflats, to get a finger on the pulse of Alaskan progressives perspective on her. After learning about bookgate, troopergate, I was floored when I read about secessiongate.
Palin and her husband are involved with the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) in which he was (is?) a member. There were some earlier disputes about her actual membership in the party, and her presence at the last convention when she was running for governor, added to the confusion.
The opening paragraph from Mudflats caught my attention:
Whoa, Nellie! You may need to be sitting down for this one. Check out this video from a meeting of the Alaskan Independence Party. The guy in the beard and suspenders is Vice Chairman of the AIP, Dexter Clark. Partial transcript is below, but you may want to sit and really listen to the whole thing. It’s like being a fly on the wall at the crazy uncle/secessionist convention! The AIP now has over 13,000 registered members, and added 300 this year.
AIP members believe that the vote to make Alaska the 50th state was unfair to native Alaskans thus invalidating Alaskan statehood. He challenges the election results for a couple of reasons: 1) the majority of eligible voters at the time were US military personnel and their families stationed in AK. (Clark calls them "occupying forces"). He claims they outnumbered natives; 2) One requirement to vote was an English only provision which excluded most of the native population; I presume he thinks that the natives would have voted against statehood; 3) He claimed that the US government embarked on an education campaign to convince military voters that statehood was in their best interests; and 4) The only option on the ballot was for or against statehood. There were no other choices such as remaining a territory or becoming a commonwealth.
I can't verify these claims. However, they appear to be the substantive rational for the party's existence. I don't know if having native Alaskan ethnicity is a requirement for membership but I suspect their platform is entirely sympathetic to native Alaskan issues. Recall that Palin's husband is part native Alaskan, according to earlier reports, he was the member, and she just attended the conventions.
Now, here's the good part. Extracted from Clark's speech:
Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference,the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There’s a joke, she’s a pretty good looking gal, there’s a joke goes around we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor. (laughter) Moreover, there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job. However, to get along and go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that.She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.
The writer on Mudflats suggests, according to Clark, Palin is still loyal to the AIP platform but used the Republican party to get on the ballot for governor. Is she an AIP infiltrator into the mainstream political establishment who will covertly enact a plan for an independent Alaska? Sounds a little like AIP fantasy. However, who knows what she thinks- no one has asked her directly. She believes in creationism, the rapture, and abstinence. Anything's possible.
Is there any chance that the MSM knows anything about this story? If Obama or his wife held a membership in the AIP, would the networks have 1000 reporters on the ground digging up video to run every 2 min, or not?
Will Charlie ask Palin why she hates America? Will he even ask her about her membership in this party, her views on Alaskan independence or ignore it altogether? If the MSM picks up this story, will the Republicans use intimidation tactics to kill it? If the story gains traction, will it be damning enough to sway those people who currently accounted for McCain's convention bump to switch to Obama? Could this story put any states that were in play firmly in the Obama camp? Is this dreaming on my part? So may questions, so little time.
Here's the web address for your viewing pleasure:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/...