Palin and the Alaskan Independance Party

A friend of mine let me know about a connection of Palin to the Alaskan Independance Party. Now, you may not know about the Alaskan Independence Party because they never blew anything up, or got involved in real estate scandals or anything like that, but that doesn't mean there might be a connection between the historic activity of the Independence Party and Sarah Palin.

So who is the Alaskan Independence Party? Well they are very much like the other third-political-party groups across America. Namely, they are quite conservative, believe in home schooling, feel that government should be a small institution, and (here is the hum-dinger) wanted to secede from the United States of America (I know, wow?) So that is what I read about them in the press, for example, this L.A. Times article.

Consulting wikipedia, what you can find is that back before 1973 (hey, that was the year that I was born) the party still talked about seceding. In reality they had a couple of options on the table:

1. Remain a territory.
2. Become a separate nation.
3. Accept common wealth status.
4. Become a state.

Did I mention this was on the ballot back in 1958? Well, that is when the group got it's start. So a lot of people feel like maybe there is something un-American about the state of Alaska seceding. Where they not purchased in 1867? Isn't it un-American to suggest leaving America... AS RECENT AS 1958?

Well, context is everything. Alaska become a U.S. State as the result of the 1958 ballot becoming the 49th U.S. State in January of 1959. So, basically, the Alaskan Independence Party has continued to wish they had seceded for the next 13 years. It is now 35 years later and the party still exists, but according to wikipedia, again, they aren't pushing for seceding.

So that is all I know about the Alaskan Independence Party. If you know more, please add a comment on the blog.

So what of Gov. Palin's connection with the party?

Well, ABC News posted a web story a while back stating that Gov. Palin was previously a member of that party, that she had attended a part convention in 1994, that she spoke at a convention in 2006 and that her husband was a party member.

Here is what I've found. In 1994 Sarah Palin attending the party convention with her husband, who was a party member at the time. She was not. In fact she has never been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. According to the Alaskan Division of Elections, she has been a registered republican since 1982.

Sarah Palin did speak at the 2006 AIP convention. She was running for Governor of Alaska as a republican at the time. So again, for the record, she was not an AIP. She was pimping her Republican credentials to AIP members asking them to vote for her, a Republican.

Since the ABC web posting stating that she was an AIP member the McCain / Palin campaign corrected those rumors and called them to task for not doing their homework it seems. People get stuff wrong all of the time. As long as they fix it, that is what is important. Palin and McCain have since reiterated the message that Palin supports the pursuit of appropriate political action from any party, not just her own, and has a proven record of working with people from other parties, including appointing people not in her party to her governatorial administration. I think that this once again bares that reality out.

She is conservative. She is a Republican. She does work with people across party lines, and she doesn't switch hats to pull that off.

As a final note (thus far, I am new to this AIP issue so there might be more to come) I don't hold her husbands affiliation with the AIP against Sarah Palin. Why? Am I giving her a pass? Before you jump to saying yes, let's talk about Michelle Obama. It was during her husband's run for the presidency (2008) that she said that this was the first time in her adult life that she was proud to be an American. I think there are people out there who have been reasonably embarrassed about stuff that had an American stamp on it, but a very small contingent of America says such things. Honestly, I think she was being colloquial. I don't think she was embarrassed her entire adult life with being an American. She was just caught up in the moment and said something just ever so slightly dramatic. I will give her un-American sentiment a pass and absolutely give Obama a pass. Even if she had spent her entire American adulthood embarrassed at this great, amazing, philanthropic nation and decided to spew her anti-American "my husband is the only great thing about America" rhetoric (which I don't think she was doing), I would still give him a pass because... he is not his wife. Likewise, even though being AIP isn't the worst thing in the world (from what I can read so far), Palin is not her husband.