Liberty Maven

John McCain continues his expertise in politics with the choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. He also continues his quite Bill Clinton-like “wherever the wind blows” stances on policy. I don’t understand how John McCain can argue for his VP selection with a straight face when he says that she “can best help me shake up Washington and make it start working again for people who are counting on us.” McCain has been working in Washington for almost 30 years. He is partly responsible for the broken Washington he himself, and now Palin, aims to fix. The hypocrisy is rampant. Sarah Palin is nothing more than a pretty political puppet for McCain’s politics as usual.

McCain and his expert campaigners have selected someone who the Ron Paul faithful singled out as a potential running mate for Dr. Paul should he magically win the GOP nomination. She has a great conservative record of cutting spending and demanding ethics in government although she is no stranger to alleged ethics violations herself. She is greatly similar to McCain in that light. McCain was part of the Keating 5 Savings and Loan scandal in the 1980’s. He seems to have an expertise in getting people to ignore such things by championing reform of the very things he’s accused of abusing. Palin has a much shorter history of such things, but she has “welcomed the investigation” of herself after being accused of similar nepotism.

On the policy front there are decidedly non-McCain-like Palin positions. She is a very strong proponent of drilling in Alaska, while McCain is still clinging on the protection of ANWR. She has spoken out against “cap and trade” while McCain has made it a key element of his platform. When the Alaskan legislature voted to not fund the implementation of REAL ID Act, Governor Palin acquiesced by not vetoing nor signing the bill. The effect being that Alaska has now rejected the federally mandated REAL ID. The ACLU even praised Palin for her inaction. McCain is a vocal supporter of REAL ID and an assortment of  federal legislation that pretends there is no 10th amendment to the Constitution.

There is very little information about where Sarah Palin stands on foreign policy. Though whatever it was, her previous stance on foreign policy matters little now. This is perfect for McCain’s manipulation of her puppet strings. She will no doubt now be a vocal supporter of “the surge” and continued occupation of “Iraq” and other countries who “harbor” terrorism. With her acceptance as McCain’s VP she has now joined the neo-conservatives in supporting a foreign policy of preemptive war, occupation, and interventionism.

However, there is some potential good with her selection. It arguably could demonstrate that McCain has seen the kind of support Ron Paul received and is trying to move more to the “Old Right” (or more towards libertarianism ever so slightly). Perhaps he is trying to mitigate Bob Barr’s spoiler potential. These arguments are quite a bit of a reach. Palin is no libertarian, but she certainly has a history of supporting more libertarian notions than McCain. I suspect her future statements will reveal her as straying further from the libertarian mindset.

In the end McCain’s selection is an extremely good politically motivated strategic move. I can just hear the McCain camp now discussing the positives of Sarah Palin: “She’s a woman…  She’s staunchly pro-life… She’s a maverick like our candidate… She’s about as much of a DC outsider as there is… She’s a well loved social conservative…”, and so on.

William Kristol, the premier neo-conservative New York Times columnist and editor of The Weekly Standard strongly pushed for Sarah Palin to be McCain’s VP choice back in June. Perhaps the actual “Neocon Of Oz” is Kristol himself. Maybe he’s the real puppeteer here, pulling McCain’s and now Palin’s strings towards his idea of the American Neo-conservative empire. Gods help us.