There is a blog out there called Mudflats (www.mudflats.wordpress.com). The tagline for them is “Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics”. Alaskan politics are now much more interesting to those of us outside Alaska, of course, because of one Sarah Palin, Governor of that state, and her present status as the Republican candidate for Vice President in the upcoming general election. Give that blog a look. There is some fascinating stuff there.
Tucked away in a recent post on Mudflats is an amazing little video clip, which we have brought to this post for your ease of reference. The amazing thing about this video is that it is a taped introduction by Governor Palin welcoming delegates not to the Alaska Republican Party convention but the convention of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) held last year in Fairbanks, AK.
The AIP describes itself as an Alaskan political party whose members advocate a range of solutions to the conflicts between federal and local authority; from advocacy for state’s rights, through a return to territorial status, all the way to complete independence and nationhood status for Alaska. The AIP also claims that the United States government has breached the contract for statehood on numerous occasions in over a dozen serious and substantial instances. Another piece of advice from the AIP is that considering the moral, educational, and economic decay of the United States, Alaskans who hold themselves to a higher standard might very well decide to at least maintain an arm’s length distance from a country in decline.
What does any of this have to do with anything, one might ask? There has been plenty of muckraking in the present election campaign, not the least of which is Governor Palin’s attacks on Senator Obama as unpatriotic and her accusations that he associates with terrorists. What we have now is one more giant serving of irony. Of course we know by now that Todd Palin, Governor Palin’s husband, was a card-carrying paid-up member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002. He later marked his voter registration application as “unaffiliated”. Isn’t it ironic indeed that the closest member of Governor Palin’s family and indeed the Governor herself by welcoming, supporting and encouraging the AIP in her official capacity as governor have associated themselves with perhaps the most un-American idea of all: secession? The slogan of the AIP is “Alaska First!”. The slogan of the McCain/Palin ticket is “Country First!”. One has to wonder which country Governor Palin has in mind: America or Alaska?
Watch the video. Tell everyone you know about it.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Election, Politics, Republican, Sarah Palin
