Among the various disclosures about Sarah Palin, the GOP VP choice, was the fact that she was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. If she once agreed with the main policy ideas of this organization, it will help voters know what they may be getting if they choose the McCain/Palin ticket in November.
Here is a short list of what Palin may support, given her brief association with the AIP. These quotes are taken directly from the AIP website (see link above):
1. In order to keep costs down the AIP believes we should privatize as much government services as possible.
2. It is a jurors right and responsibility to vote to acquitt if they feel the law is unjust.
3.Many in the AIP support INDEPENDENCE. Some support COMMONWEALTH and others support STATEHOOD.
It is the AIPs wish to get a true plebecite (vote) according to international law, only legal Alaskan citizens, it is in the language of the people, federal military and their dependants are not legal citizens and will not be allowed to vote in this plebecite.
4. The AIP opposes with rare exception, any secret activities or expenditures of funds of any government agency, state, federal or international.
There’s more, of course, but these seem to be the issues of most concern to the general population of the US at large. Some folks are saying that Palin should be disqualified from the VP office because the AIP supports the secession of Alaska from the US. That’s not how I read the policy issues on their website - they appear to be saying that Alaska citizens should have been given the right to vote for statehood, but were denied that opportunity. Is that true? I’m not up on the history, so I have to pass on that one.
The AIP has libertarian leanings. They don’t approve of the government borrowing money for anything other than capital expenses, they don’t approve of government bankruptcy, and they think parents should get to educate their kids any way they want. But they also think that a juror, not the state of US Supreme Court, should decide if a law is just or not.
I’m a Democrat, so I won’t be voting for the McCain/Palin ticket - but there isn’t anything on the AIP website that seems all that scary to me. Alaskans are an independent bunch. (There are many people who would like Washington, Oregon and northern California to have the opportunity to create their own independent nation, called Cascadia - maybe Palin would support our right to vote on that issue, too…)