Several Republican women are enthusiastically voicing their support for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be the first woman nominated to the Presidential ticket by their party.
Ambassador Mary Kramer is no stranger to history. The former President of the Iowa Senate was the first woman to be elected to that position.
“Governor Palin has always answered the call to serve, and done so for the right reasons,” Kramer said. “She has demonstrated executive leadership in every office she’s held and actually has a record of getting results to back it up.”
State Representative Sandy Greiner of Keota was in Minnesota preparing for next week’s Republican National Convention when she heard the news.
“Women who have been in politics a lot longer than I were fixed to televisions and moved to tears upon seeing that Governor Palin had been chosen to be our Vice Presidential nominee,” Greiner said. “The excitement here is incredible and it is because her selection signifies real change for the Republican Party and for the United States.”
Indeed, the addition of Governor Palin to the McCain ticket has caused a new debate to begin swirling around this election’s buzzword: change. The Alaska governor is a fresh face in the Republican Party and that differs greatly from Barack Obama’s choice of long-time Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
“Governor Palin is known as a maverick in her own right and is a perfect fit to help lead the real campaign for change in Washington,” said retiring State Representative Carmine Boal. “In her home state of Alaska, she has battled corruption, stood up to lobbyists, even turned away pork spending from Congress. Governor Palin is the best choice to help Senator McCain fight the same old politics that have divided our nation.”
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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Attacks, praise stretch truth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 3, 2008
Filed at 11:59 p.m. ET
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.
Some examples:
PALIN: ''I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere.''
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a ''bridge to nowhere.''
PALIN: ''There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform -- not even in the state senate.''
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: ''The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.''
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: ''She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,'' he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more ''responsible'' for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state -- by population.
MCCAIN: ''She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,'' he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under ''federal status,'' which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin ''got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.''
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: ''We need change, all right -- change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.''
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
This woman is a terrible choice for VP. If McCain thinks women will vote for her simply because she has a pair of ovaries, he is sadly mistaken. She tells outrageous lies and has serious character flaws. While Governor of Alaska her state had the worst record of any state in rape and in murder of women by men. The rape rate in Alaska is 2.5 times the national average. She also had the audacity to make women pay for their own rape kits. How could any self-respecting woman support her knowing this?
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