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The difference between Palin and Bush? Lipstick.

September 6th, 2008
By ELYAS BAKHTIARI

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I know, Sarah Palin is a Washington outsider with no direct ties to the current administration. In that sense, she does represent a clean break from George W. Bush. But when you get past the narrative and look at her positions on actual issues, she’s much closer to Bush ideologically than McCain is.

The Palin pick was designed to fire up the segment of the Republican party that has always had the most enthusiasm for Bush: social conservatives (i.e., the Christian right). She has succeeded in exciting that crowd, but not by bringing any radically new ideas to the table. On the issues, she represents new packaging for a lot of the same (and often out-of-touch) ideas:

Abortion. Palin is strongly pro-life, and has suggested that she would oppose abortion even if her own daughter were raped. A lot of Americans are pro-life to an extent, but her views are pretty extreme and the country isn’t as evenly-divided on this issue as it sometimes seems. Only 18% of Americans agree that abortion should be illegal in all cases, and the majority (53%) consider themselves pro-choice.

Iraq. We’re still learning about her positions related to Iraq (and she still seems to be learning them as well, saying last year that “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”). However, speaking to ministry students, she has described the war as “a task from God.” That’s eerily similar to language Bush has used, and considering 64% of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, it’s not exactly a mainstream sentiment.

Ethics. Outing Valerie Plame. Firing attorneys for political reasons. Destroying White House e-mails. Warrantless wiretapping. The list of the Bush administration’s abuses of power is long, and the last thing we need is another Machiavellian executive branch. Palin, however, has been accused of firing employees for personal/political reasons… several times. Troopergate is the most well-known case, but she has also been accused of firing a police chief who didn’t support her as mayor and pressuring a librarian who (hypothetically) refused to ban books(!).

Global warming. John McCain has been praised for his relative sanity (particularly compared to Bush) when it comes to addressing global warming. Palin, on the other hand, admits that Alaska will be affected by a changing environment “because of its location,” but does not “attribute it to being man-made.”

Education. She supports “school choice,” but still seems committed to funding public education. That’s a pretty boilerplate Republican position, so it’s not a major deal. But she also favors teaching creationism alongside education and is opposed to explicit sex education (I’ll refrain from commenting on the irony and obvious consequences…).

Obviously, I picked the issues where she’s closely aligned with Bush. Take a look at her other stances for yourself. She’s a talented speaker and politician and has started out as a fairly-popular VP pick, particularly with the Republican base. But McCain needs independents and moderates, not the base, to win and, as Palin’s views become more well-known, a lot of those voters may be turned off.

McCain’s strategy is to keep her in a cone of silence and away from the media, hoping the campaign-driven narrative will overshadow issues. That’s a risky strategy. We still don’t know a lot about her ideas about issues like foreign policy, and she’s still new enough to the national scene to be able to offer new positions or clarify statements that might not appeal to the swing voters the campaign is targeting. The media silence leaves only her past statements to provide some sort of indication about where she stands and what she believes.

Cross-posted at Ablogistan.



This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Sarah Palin, Social Conservatives, Conservatism, Ideology, George W. Bush. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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