Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Palin Investigation Stalled By McCain Campaign, State Legislator Says.

If we are to take McCain at his word, and believe that Sarah Palin has been vetted and that he knows that she did no wrong during the Troopergate scenario, then why is he trying to delay the investigations final report, which is due out days before the November 4th election? Doesn't that imply that he knows that something is amiss here?

The Alaska state senator running an investigation of Gov. Palin says the McCain campaign is using stall tactics to prevent him from releasing his final report by Oct. 31, four days before the November election.

"It's likely to be damaging to the Governor,"
said Senator Hollis French, a Democrat, appointed the project manager for a bi-partisan State Senate Legislative Counsel Committee investigation of claims that Palin abused her office to get the Alaska public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, fired.

Surely one of the problems of McCain picking someone who is basically unknown to a national audience is that McCain is, in effect, asking voters to vote blind: to accept his word about who this person is. And I would argue that he is not a position to tell us anyway as he doesn't even know her.

Considering that this person may very well one day be Commander in Chief - should anything befall McCain - then it's a highly undemocratic premise which McCain has proposed here. Especially as many of the things McCain thinks he knew about her turned out not to be true.

But delaying the report into her conduct appears to me to be deliberately asking the American people to vote blind in case the report says anything negative about her.

To that end, her lawyer is doing everything to make it impossible for Special Counsel Steve Branchflower to interview Palin:
Branchflower hasn't been able to set up an interview with Palin. French said the state will fly Branchflower to wherever Palin is on the campaign trail if needed.

"Clearly the governor's new political role will make it more challenging for her to make time for this investigation," French wrote. But Palin needs to be interviewed sometime in September, he said.

Van Flein said the investigation is "bad timing" in the middle of a presidential campaign.
He said he couldn't guarantee her availability this month.

I'm sorry, but didn't Palin herself claim whilst being introduced to the Republicans:
"This is a matter when principles ... matter more than the party line," she said to the cheering crowd of 15,000.
Why are Palin and McCain so against the principle that the American people have the right to know if she has done anything wrong before they are asked to vote for her?

Why, if they are both so sure of her innocence - and if this election really is about principles - are McCain and Palin doing everything in their power to make sure that the American public go to the polls without knowing what actually happened in Alaska?

Aren't the Republicans the ones who usually want to fight every election on "character" rather than policy? Why are they going to such lengths to ensure that this enquiry, which might tell us quite a lot about who she really is, be hidden from public view until after that same public are asked to vote for a ticket with her on it?

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