Thom Hartmann is betting Palin will feel the pull of her family obligations and withdraw tomorrow. That seems to much "crow" to me. But it is important to highlight the real issues that are involved.
One of the chief ones is the candidate's involvement in the Alaska Independent Party--and her patriotism. While she denies it, the evidence is incontrovertable:
After refraining from commenting on the charge for a day, the McCain campaign on Tuesday asserted that Palin was never a member of the AIP.
But 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.
To that end, I'd like to offer a couple of clips from their own website, www.akip.org (which seems to be running very, very slowly today!)
(Palin says she didn't know what they stood for when she joined. That seems a bit ingenuous for the second most powerful executive in the country.)
Here's what probably attracted our godly candidate to the party:
To reinforce the unalienable rights endowed by our Creator to Alaska law, by eliminating the use of the word "privilege" in the Alaska statutes.
This is about as dominionist as a group as you can find in the United States.
But Palin's current effort to block surrender of her emails due to "executive privilege" seems to counter another point:
To support the complete abolition of the concept of sovereign or governmental immunity, so as to restore accountability for public servants.
And Palin's insistence that the government should criminalize medical procedures runs directly counter to this provision:
To strengthen the traditional family and support individual accountability without government interference or regulation.
The group isn't uniformly for secession, but many are--and their position is that the federal government's statehood efforts were illegal.
Alaska has never been an equal state.
Feds create and enforce laws which are only in effect in Alaska
Many in the AIP support INDEPENDENCE. Some support COMMONWEALTH and others support STATEHOOD.
It is the AIPs wish to get a true plebecite according to international law, only legal Alaskan citizens, it is in the language of the people, federal military and their dependants are not legal citizens and will not be allowed to vote in this plebescite.
But probably the most amazing set of quotes on their website from Pravda
There are many potential Kosovos in the international community – a great number of these within the United States of America itself, where the Lakota people claim their right to a huge swathe of territory across the north of the country, the peoples of Aztlan in the south proclaim their right to independence and today, the Alaska Independence Movement presents its case in PRAVDA.Ru
"Political parties, both Republican and Democrat, dominate from Washington, D.C., and [don't] quite understand the political problems, or opportunities, in an arctic and subarctic country." --Walter J. Hickel
"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." --Joe Vogler
(An Interview submitted by Lynette Clark, Chairman, Alaskan Independence Party)
This is an organization to which she paid dues--and which she has recently supported!