PALIN == TYPICAL GOP EXTREMIST

I was doing a survey recently for a mayoral race and I was surprised at the number of hot-button issues that a mayor has no say over were included, among them the abortion issue. I assumed that this was just another case of the GOP trying to motivate their base. When Palin first ran for mayor, she also used these hot-button issues, so she's really no different from your standard issue authoritarian/fundie GOP candidate. This is NOT the change we need.

Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual

By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: September 2, 2008
NY Times

...one aspect of American life did not come to town until 1996, the year Sarah Palin ran for mayor and Wasilla got its first local lesson in wedge politics.

The traditional turning points that had decided municipal elections in this town of less than 7,000 people — Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? — seemed all but obsolete the year Ms. Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C. Stein.

Anti-abortion fliers circulated. Ms. Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved before because city elections are nonpartisan, ran advertisements on Ms. Palin’s behalf.

In other words, the real issues didn't matter but the ideology did. Palin also showed the typical insistence on personal loyalty, just like Bush does:

During her campaign, Ms. Palin appealed to voters who felt that city employees under Mr. Stein, who was not from Wasilla and had earned a degree in public administration at the University of Oregon, had been unresponsive and rigid regarding a new comprehensive development plan. In turn, some city employees expressed support for Mr. Stein in a campaign advertisement.

Once in office, Ms. Palin asked many of Mr. Stein’s backers to resign — something virtually unheard of in Wasilla in past elections. The public works director, city planner, museum director and others were forced out. The police chief, Irl Stambaugh, was later fired outright.