Our political Quote of the Day comes from Dan Fagan, writing in Anchorage Daily News about news that GOP Vice Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin isn’t going to cooperate with the
“Troopergate” investigation and news reports that the GOP is lawyering up to try and delay or derail the investigation totally:
Meanwhile, this Palin VP thing has Alaskans all stirred up? Much like Palin divided the Republican party, she has managed to divide the state over her national candidacy.
Clearly most Alaskans choose to ignore the facts of the Troopergate scandal. They want Palin to make it to the national stage.
Republicans scold me all the time, “You don’t want Obama to win do you? Stop criticizing Palin!”
My question to my conservative friends is simple. Does the truth still matter?
Truth is at the very heart of the conservative movement. Isn’t it true that smaller government, self empowerment, and personal responsibility are worth fighting for? Isn’t it true that promoting a culture of life and defending marriage will keep us strong as a nation?
But some Republican leaders are abandoning truth and closing ranks to help Palin cover up her scandal by attacking the investigation.
The conservative movement as nurtured by Senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan is effectively dead, in terms of its original concept and most passionately advocated values. It put a premium on principles and worked hard to win. The current movement puts more of a premium on winning and works hard to or explain how it is sticking to often discarded principles. MORE:
But too many in my party are not interested in the facts. They want Palin to win — at all cost.
I want McCain and Palin to win too. But with Palin’s refusal to cooperate with the independent investigator and her transparent delay tactics, Americans deserve to know what Palin is trying to hide before we vote her a heartbeat away from the leader of the free world.
My fellow conservatives, remember how frustrating it was when Bill Clinton committed perjury and liberals looked the other way.
As conservatives, we are no better unless we demand full disclosure from our governor when it comes to Troopergate.
No politician is so popular and charismatic that they should be above accountability and telling the truth. Not even Sarah Palin.
The first problem: there are signs that this is going to work. The second problem: this again underscores why a segment of Americans won’t join political parties any more. Outrage is not just selective — it is relative.
The Democrats defended Bill Clinton since he was on their sports team (you defend your team and keep on the attack against the opposing team) and charged the battle against him was all just GOP politics (some of it was and some of it indeed involved allegations of perjury). Now Republicans use all kinds of arguments to defend Palin and make sure the investigation is delayed or derailed, when they argued for full disclosure disclosure under Clinton, and they charge it’s just Democratic politics.
It doesn’t depend on what the word “is” is.
It depends on who you want win is.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.