Sarah Palin has taken over the media. While completely unknown less than two weeks ago, she's been jettisoned to celebrity status. But no one seems to talk about the things she was doing before she got her totally unexpected nomination. Let's dig into the archives to see who the real Sarah Palin is, sometimes in her own words.
In January of this year, she wrote an op-ed to the New York Times simultaneously dismissing that polar bears need to be on the Endangered Species List and affirming that there are "proven effects of climate change." In May, she led Alaska to sue when then listing became reality.
She also won popularity for her oil tax rebate of $1,200 per person, but rejected a request to help Juneau residents with public money after an avalanche jacked up their electricity rates (although she was perfectly fine with begging for federal money to help local businesses.
She was quoted as saying, "We cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks" (Source), but as I'm sure you all know, got $27 million for little Wassila while she was there.
Palin won her position as governor largely through her promises for transparent government and throwing Frank Murkowski under the bus even though he was the one who appointed her to the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a nice little job at $118,000 a year (Source).
She called her opponent "disingenuous" over his fuzzy plans to build a natural gas pipeline, yet less than two years later, proposed $500 million in subsidies for TransCanada to build the pipeline, after rejecting bids from BP and Conoco Phillips, even though they didn't need any outside help from Alaskan taxpayers, and TransCanada could not even make a guarantee that they would complete the pipeline (Source). She was singularly aggressive in her pushing for the bid to be won by TransCanada. I'd bet there's something in it for her, wouldn't you?
These facts may not have all the glamour and pomp of a pregnant daughter or a passing resemblance to Tina Fey, but they're a lot more important in finding out who she really is. For someone who was basically a political nobody until 2006, she sure has sewn up a lot of cash and power for herself in a short amount of time.
Plagiarizing the Democrats' Change slogan doesn't really pass muster when you're a typical kickback-earnin', animal-hatin', earmarkin' traitor of a Republican.