Why the Washington Post Was Right to Publish Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin‘s column today in the Washington Post calling for President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen summit is pure malarkey. Which is why the Post was absolutely right to print it.

Those who are claiming that the column was factually inaccurate miss the point. Since when has anything that Palin ever said been accurate? It’s like accusing Sarah Silverman of failing to be serious or Hugh Hefner of being promiscuous.

Palin isn’t interested in accuracy, but causing a stir and, above all, positioning herself as a serious candidate for the GOP’s nomination in 2012, which keeps moving to the right, partly in response to Palin and partly because Palin is responding to it. So far, she’s done an excellent job of trying to establish herself as a major voice in the party. Now she needs to tackle policy, and she’s doing it.

Her column epitomizes conservative conspiracy thinking and ventilates her views rather deftly (does anyone think that Palin actually wrote it?). It accuses a cabal of radical scientists of pushing alarmism about global warming. To be sure, Palin, in order to give her views a veneer of sobriety, concedes that warming is actually taking place, just that it can’t be pinned on humans. How come conservatives, who are always stressing individual moral responsibility, suddenly abdicate it when it comes to global warming?

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Sarah Palin Puts The Trig Question Back On The Table (Video)

Sarah Palin has now made two very clear public statements in the last day about the legitimacy of questions about the maternity of her son Trig. Here’s the first, transcribed from the interview above:

Would you make [Obama’s long form] birth certificate an issue if you ran?

I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers.

Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?

I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were. And I don’t think that that was fair to voters to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of the things that now we’re seeing made manifest in the administration.

I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.

And here’s the second, a later Facebook attempt to walk back some of this:

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask… which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

Palin vs. the Planet

Congressman Ed Markey, co-author of a new energy bill in the House, fires back at the Alaska governor for her confusion, fuzzy math, and inaction on global warming.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posed for a portrait in her office in Anchorage, Alaska.

The future ex-Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, decided to dip her toe in the water on the national debate over energy and climate legislation in an op-ed in the Washington Post recently. Hailing from Alaska, one would assume the Governor might have noticed the water around her is indeed rising.

While the Governor’s op-ed does not mention the words global warming, Alaska sits on the frontlines of climate change, with temperatures rising four degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 years; melting permafrost is sending homes and roads in coastal villages like the centuries-old Shishmaref plunging into the sea.

Palin’s Cap-and-Trade Is Alaska’s Bait-and-Switch

Sarah Palin

In her op-ed in the Washington Post this week, Sarah Palin, while still governor, took up the sword for corporate interests; a position directly opposing what is best for Alaska.

The flip-flop to anyone who watched the vice presidential debate was obvious. When Gwen Ifill asked, “Do you support capping carbon emissions?” Palin responded, “I do. I do.”

What or whom changed Sarah Palin’s mind about cap-and-trade?

In both her resignation speech and her op-ed, Palin touted AGIA, the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. It was widely supported and passed with a vote of 58-1. “This is the largest private sector energy project, ever. THIS is energy independence,” she said on July 3. In her piece, she railed Obama’s plan for cap-and-trade. She mentioned AGIA again and how we are “progressing” the 3,000-mile project.

Palin’s New Job — Confuse Americans on Energy & Environment

Now that Sarah Palin has announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska, you may wonder: What has she been doing? How will she fill her time? In an Op-Ed piece for The Washington Post, Palin kindly provided an answer. She’s committed herself to a single task: confusing the American public on energy and environment.

Widespread pollution from factories is negatively impacting the global environment.

On Tuesday, Palin’s Op-Ed criticized Obama’s cap and trade bill — known as the American Clean Energy & Security Act, or ACES — and refused to acknowledge the existence of climate change. The article so fully muddles the issues that the best thing one can hope for is that someone else wrote the article, and the Governor simply signed her name.

Behind all the bluster — and the exclamations! that neatly turn fact into fiction — are familiar phrases. She appeals to national independence, rising unemployment, taxes, supply side economics and God’s creation. In so doing, she positions Democrats as enervating technocrats opposed to prosperity, and herself as rooted in a history of economic growth, rugged independence and faith.

To use talking points is one thing, to rely on them another. This isn’t a partisan issue; candidates from both parties have lines they work through. But Palin’s argument is so dependent on established Republican strategy that is reads like a grab bag of worn-out phrases.

This is where Palin’s argument veers from the path of denial. In making her argument, she ignores mounting, if not overwhelming evidence on energy and environment. She also strays from mainstream public opinion.

Senator John Kerry: The Debate Gov. Palin Is Ducking

US Senator John Kerry, (D) Massachusetts

In 2008, progressives took some giant steps forward in marshalling all the resources available to fight the distortions and use the truth to fight back.

Now we need to apply lessons learned to governing.

In this case, the names haven’t even changed – just the topics and the turf.

Coming up in the fall, the US Senate is going to be debating what I think is the most important legislation we’ve considered in a long, long time to tackle global climate change which imperils everything from our economy to our national security.

But Governor Sarah Palin and a whole host of others are now leading the effort to ignore the costs of doing nothing and distort the costs of doing something.

It’s long overdue for the truth to fight back.

Yesterday, Governor Palin published an oped in the Washington Post that we can’t allow to stand unchallenged.

Follow me below the fold for more …

Senator John Kerry: What Gov. Sarah Palin Forgot

Senator John Kerry

Writing in this morning’s Washington Post, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote, “many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges.”

Unfortunately, her promise to roll up her sleeves and tackle serious issues is followed by a column that focuses on everything but the single grave challenge that forms the basis of all of our actions: the crisis of global climate change.

Yes, she manages to write about the climate change action in Congress without ever mentioning the reason we are doing this in the first place. It’s like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home.

The global climate change crisis threatens our economy and our national security in profound ways. Governor Palin need look no further than the view from her front porch in Alaska to see how destructive this crisis can be. The small native village of Newtok is being literally wiped off the map because of a melting permafrost and disappearing sea ice. The New York Times reported nearly two years ago: