more background on palin.
an oddly (for the LA Times) positive piece on our VP candidate. it's fun watching the MSM try to catch up
to this story. we have been talking about sarah palin in this forum for months.
Sarah Palin: the making of the candidate
The Alaska governor has ascended on good fortune, grit and force of personality.
ANCHORAGE -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is as complex as the place she calls home. Plucked from near-political obscurity to become Sen. John McCain's running mate, Palin either has pitch-perfect political instincts or has benefited from a spectacular run of luck that has landed her in the ultimate right place at the right time.
It is easy to see why McCain was drawn to her; their political resumes have much in common. The 44-year-old Republican has sold herself as a political maverick willing to buck her party over principle, an ethics reformer who quit a lucrative job rather than play ball with the old boys' network and a pragmatist who will reach across the aisle to get her agenda enacted. Like McCain, she has at times been a black sheep in her own party. Also like McCain, she has been accused of overstepping ethical bounds on occasion.
And perhaps because she is a woman -- a former beauty queen at that -- in an exceedingly macho state, not everyone has taken her seriously. Her schoolmarm look, she has said, was developed as a defense against just that attitude. Still, some who know her well believe her to be a policy lightweight. Others accuse her of focusing only on oil and gas and ignoring other important issues -- such as healthcare and education -- that she is not particularly passionate about. (Similar charges have been leveled at McCain as well.) Though there has been a mix of reaction to her selection by McCain, she is an exceedingly popular figure in her state. Opponents cross her at their peril.
"The landscape up here is littered with people who have underestimated her," said Eric Croft, a Democratic former state representative who enlisted her help when he investigated a Republican oil commissioner for ethical breaches. "Maybe she is not ready for prime time, or maybe she is going to litter the national landscape with people who have underestimated her."
She came of age politically when the decades-long iron grip of Republicans in Alaska was just beginning to loosen, partly through scandal and partly through changing demographics. For three decades or more, Alaska was an overwhelmingly Republican state. It was dominated by a trio of politicians who were in lock-step with the oil and gas industry but managed to remain overwhelmingly popular because they brought home billions of federal dollars.
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