Sarah Palin’s not-so-hidden extremism

Ezra Klein on Sarah Palin’s apparent taste for extremism:

Sarah Palin is a secessionist, or at least is sympathetic enough to the cause that she belongs to a political group whose mission is to “seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution.” I guess the least bad explanation here is that the Alaska Independence Party has some clout in Alaska, and Palin was an ambitious pol willing to put aside her distaste for secession if it would advance her career, but is that really so helpful? That she was willing to partner up with a group that’s fundamentally more radical on secession than the Nation of Islam? That doesn’t worry anyone on the McCain campaign?

There’s a worrying emergence of extremist tendencies in Palin. So far as we know — and we’re only about five days in — she’s been enthusiastic about Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, the Alaska Independence Party, and Ron Paul. In other words, she’s allied herself with radical culture warriors, radical conservative economics, radical secessionists, and radical libertarian/isolationists. This is someone who’s pretty comfortable on the fringe of the right wing.

This alone shows the degree to which the press pulls it’s punches with the Republicans.  If Barack Obama were a member of the Nation of Islam, or had previously expressed support for black secessionism, he would still be a relatively obscure Illinois state senator, if that.  Hell, the fact that he had a black pastor, and served on the same community board as an aging 60s radical has been enough to paint him as some sort of leftist radical.  I can’t even the fathom the shitshow which would go down if it turned out that Obama was sympathetic to folks like Lewis Farrakhan.  Obama (or any Democrat, for that matter) probably couldn’t read A People’s History of the United States without the media painting him as a “far-left ideologue.”

Sarah Palin’s affinity for extremists is worrying.  It suggests that she would be amenable to policies – the flat tax, blanket abortion bans, disengagement with the rest of the world – which are very far outside of the mainstream.  Americans deserve to hear about Palin’s relationship with the far-right; it’s far more relevant and far more important than any nonsense about her pregnant daughter.

cross-posted from Feministe