Sarah Palin Under Pressure to Make Up Her Mind

Now, no wise cracking that Sarah doesn't have a mind to make up.

From msnbc.com's "Iowa GOP chief: 'Risky' for Palin to ignore Iowa:"

The Iowa Republican Party chairman said Thursday that if Sarah Palin seeks the presidency, she shouldn't think she can win the GOP nomination without seriously participating in the first-in-the-nation caucuses

Matthew Strawn said Iowa caucus-goers do not want to be taken for granted and that they demand to meet — and be wooed by — presidential hopefuls. He said Iowans cherish their role in asking the tough questions at town halls, coffee shops and farm co-ops — and will punish candidates who ignore them.

"I don't know why you'd want to take yourself out of the national conversation by not participating in Iowa," Strawn said, suggesting voters would sour on any nominee who ignored the state in the nominating process. "I don't think you can write off Iowa's electoral votes if you're the nominee." ...

Of course, Sarah finds it difficult to make decisions (or doesn't know what she's talking about). Salon's "Palin tries to walk back First Amendment tweet," has the most recent example:

Sarah Palin is now claiming that a tweet she sent out about First Amendment rights was misinterpreted to mean that she opposed the Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling in the Westboro Baptist Church case this week. Salon and many other outlets wrote about what appeared to be Palin's clear opposition to that ruling, which held that protesters from the fringe church could hold demonstrations outside soldiers' funerals. It seemed to be pretty clear-cut: ...

Perhaps Palin will make up her mind by May 5th. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza writes:

... But when might we know the full scope of the field? Circle May 5 on your calendars.

That's the day of the first-in-the-south presidential debate being hosted by the South Carolina Republican Party and, more importantly for our purposes, Fox News Channel. ...

It's not yet certain that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will run, but if he does there may be some tension between Palin and Huckabee. He has criticized Natalie Portman's pregnancy. What must he be thinking about Bristol Palin's?

Decisions ... decisions ...

Palin's Star Fading Fast

Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers writes, in "Even GOP activists are turning against Sarah Palin,"

As Sarah Palin wonders whether to run for president, she might want to talk to people in places such as South Carolina.

She'd find her star fading, and her prospects daunting.

Republicans still like her, but now they openly question whether she could or should be nominated for president, let alone elected.

At a recent gathering in South Carolina, the site of a crucial early presidential primary next year, party activists said the former Alaska governor didn't have the experience, the knowledge of issues or the ability to get beyond folksy slang and bumper-sticker generalities that they think is needed to win and govern.

Many are shopping for someone else. They're looking at Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for example, and seeing what they call a smarter, more experienced candidate who's equally as conservative.

"Sarah Palin with a brain," said Gail Moore, a Republican from Columbia. ...

Several people were interviewed for the article, and they freely criticize Palin for her inadequacies. Then the article concludes:

It's been a surprising turn since 2008, said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, which conducts the McClatchy-Marist Poll. Despite a barrage of criticism of Palin by Democrats and the news media, she came out of the election looking as if she'd be the major force for the party's nomination.

"She doesn't appeal to the center, and she hasn't been trying to," Miringoff said.

"There's a general sense among Republicans that this is someone they like being part of the 2012 narrative," Miringoff said. "They don't mind her pushing the edge of the envelope on issues. But there's concern about electability, about polarization. They're not necessarily sure she should be the nominee."

Don Long of Lake Wylie, S.C. said of Palin, "Her major weakness is that she needs to bone up on how the government works. I don't know if she's done as much of that as she needs to." I believe that the reason why Sarah Palin hasn't boned up on government is that Sarah Palin has no interest in government, and that, in turn, is why she came to hate her job as Alaska's governor.

Joe Miller: Alaskan Secessionist?

The entire country is interested in Alaska's primary for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. A tea partier, Joe Miller, primaried an incumbent Republican, Lisa Murkowski, and may win the nomination. The race is close and will be decided by absentee ballots, which may not be counted for another two weeks. Of course, another thing driving the attention is that Sarah Palin endorsed Joe Miller. CBS' Bob Schieffer had Joe Miller on "Face The Nation," this morning, and he seemed skeptical that Miller could win the general election:



During the interview, Miller brought up the idea of a land-for-cash swap:

"I think Alaska ranks about second per capita of the amount of federal dollars that come in to the state," host Bob Schieffer said. [According to statistics by the Brookings Institution, for FY 2008 Alaska received $2,574.68 in Federal dollars per capita, behind only Vermont and the District of Columbia.]

"You've said that we can't afford all that federal money that's pouring into Alaska. Should Alaska get less money from the federal government?" Schieffer asked.

"I don't think anybody can [claim] - sitting at $13.3 trillion in absolute debt, by some estimates $130 trillion in future unfunded obligations - that we are in any way in a good financial state," Miller said.

"The answer to this is to basically transfer the responsibilities and power of government back to the states and the people. That is really the only answer, I think, out of this crisis," Miller said. [emphasis added]

"As we continue to tighten our belts because fiscally that's critical for the economic solvency of this nation, we also transfer it to the states more power. That means more ownership of lands. It's not a situation where you just yank the financial plug, but at the same time you're transferring over discretion over the use of the resource base," Miller said. [emphasis added]

"In this state, two-thirds of it is owned by the federal government. There really isn't a good constitutional basis for that," Miller said. "It's our position that as the money is restricted, the lands are transferred." [emphasis added]

Does Miller consider the federal dollars an entitlement?

What about the team? Isn't Alaska part of the U.S.? How would a land transfer, which amounts to a resource transfer (And to whom? Miller doesn't say.), from the federal government help the rest of the country? Isn't this a selfish position?

If Alaska's resources are as great as he seems to believe, how would the transition of ownership work? How would the state survive with raw land in exchange for federal payments? Can the resources be developed overnight?

Miller claims that there isn't a good constitutional basis for the federal government's ownership of Alaskan land; however, there may be and probably is a legal basis. States other than Alaska divided land between the state and federal government as a condition of statehood.


Update: The legal basis for federal ownership of Alaskan land is the Statehood Act which admitted Alaska. Some excerpts:

Section 4: As a compact with the United States said State and its people do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to any lands or other property not granted or confirmed to the State or its political subdivisions by or under the authority of this Act, ...

Section 5: The State of Alaska and its political subdivisions, respectively, shall have and retain title to all property, real and personal, title to which is in the Territory of Alaska or any of the subdivisions. Except as provided in section 6 hereof, the United States shall retain title to all property, real and personal, to which it has title, including public lands. [This is simply a recognition of existing title]

Section 6 of the Act describes how some land that was not owned by the state could become state owned: a) For the purposes of furthering the development of and expansion of communities, the State of Alaska is hereby granted and shall be entitled to select, within twenty-five years after the date of the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, from lands within national forests in Alaska ... b) The State of Alaska, in addition to any other grants made in this section, is hereby granted and shall be entitled to select, within twenty-five years after the admission of Alaska into the Union, not to exceed one hundred and two million five hundred and fifty thousand acres from the public lands of the United States in Alaska ...

Joe Miller is a graduate of Yale Law.


Updater: Article IV, Section Three gives the Congress authority to admit new states: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

Will Joe Miller continue to claim that there is no good constitutional basis for federal land ownership in Alaska? The Constitution gave the Congress certain authority ... with which Congress wrote the Statehood Act ... The Statehood Act declares ...

Sarah Palin's shortsightedness

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, being primaried by a tea partier endorsed by Sarah Palin, has made a cogent argument for another term:

Seniority actually means something in the Senate.

Joe Miller, her opponent, says of her:

"She has a very liberal voting record and that also reflects her views of government as being the answer to all ills," he said. "That kind of perspective isn't going to pull the nation from the course we're on."

But the Associated Press' Becky Bohrer writes:

Murkowski makes no apologies for her voting record, acknowledging that while she's not a guaranteed Republican vote, she votes "with Alaskans' interests 100 percent of the time."

Palin's endorsement of Miller is typical of the sort of throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater thinking of Sarah Palin and ideologues like her. We see it in many of her other endorsements, and in her haste to score a point over an Islamic cultural center in New York, to the detriment of the war in Afghanistan, something she has supported in the past.