Just to keep things interesting, we now read this. Sarah Palin and her husband were at one time members of the Alaska Independence Party, a party that stands for secession from the US of A, among other things. This story just keeps getting better and better. Why that should be controversial, I surely don’t know.
The link I provided above is typical of how the media is handling these “revelations.” Anything outside their narrow circle of experience is being treated as though it were a function of improper vetting, or is a massive strategic blunder on McCain’s part, or whatnot. But I read somewhere that Sarah Palin was vetted by a team of twenty-three individuals — something like that. So it really should be assumed that the McCain campaign knew all this stuff when McCain made his selection, and that newspaper reporters and bloggers are all playing catch up. Shoot, I knew about the Alaska Independence thing a couple years ago. And as they are playing catch up, and are breathlessly reporting this stuff, it is very plain to me that they are blundering right into a trap.
If the McCain camp knew all this stuff beforehand, which they clearly did, and McCain selected Palin anyway, which he did, and if there hasn’t been a massive shift toward constitutional thinking in the McCain camp, which there hasn’t, then somebody in McCain’s circle of advisors is very, very, very smart. Makes Karl Rove look like a piker.
Update: check here. But it still seems clear that she and her husband had clear connections in this direction.