Sarah Palin Watch: Danger of Palin is Her Culmination of the Religious Extremist Right

It wasn't until the 1990s that local churches like the Wasilla Assembly of God, which Palin grew up attending, became aggressively political. A few years before Palin became mayor, a group of preachers confronted the school board with questions about social issues that had never before surfaced in local politics, according to O'Hara, who wrote first for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and then for the Anchorage Daily News. "They started asking me, 'Would you allow a homosexual to teach in schools?' and 'Do you favor abortion?'" she said. "At the time, I didn't know what was coming. I said, 'This is not a school board issue. We have overcrowding. We have funding problems.'" The last time O'Hara ran, conservative pastors mounted an effort to defeat her, saying she favored hiring homosexuals, but they failed. Nevertheless, in 1996, feeling increasingly alienated in a place she'd lived for twenty-five years, she quit the school board and moved to more liberal Anchorage. "The whole community changed," she said. "It became extremely rigid and intolerant, and you can see that in every election since." Palin, said O'Hara, "represents the worst of those values. She feels that because she's a member of the right church, she's chosen by God to inflict her values on everyone." With her vice presidential nomination, Sarah Palin has become the ultimate religious-right success story. Ever since the Christian Coalition was formed using the infrastructure of Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential run, the movement has focused on building power from the ground up, turning conservative churches into little political machines. "I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members," Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed said in 1996. Palin, who got her start in a local church-backed political struggle, is very much the product of Reed's strategy. Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality, never once mentioned abortion. Jesus anti public prayer (Mathew 6:5), anti militarism and (Matthew 26:52) for separation church and state John (18:36), for supporting the poor and forgiving our neighbors. Where does Jesus figure into these evangelical extremists views? I can't quite understand. But Palin is the culmination of these extremists efforts, make no mistake about it. ...Nevertheless, several people who've dealt with her say that those concerned about church-state separation should be chilled by the idea of a Palin presidency. "To understand Sarah Palin, you have to realize that she is a religious fundamentalist," said Howard Bess, a retired liberal Baptist minister living in Palmer. "The structure of her understanding of life is no different from a Muslim fundamentalist." ...Obviously the religious right has endured many setbacks in recent years. Ted Haggard, former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, slunk away in disgrace following a scandal involving a gay prostitute and crystal meth. Ralph Reed was tainted by his association with the extravagantly corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Jerry Falwell died, as did the influential Florida televangelist D. James Kennedy. Tom DeLay, one of the movement's fiercest allies, left Congress after being indicted on charges of criminal conspiracy. Nonetheless, the Republican Party is actually more dependent on religious conservatives than ever. In the 2006 midterms, the most significant GOP defeats were among moderate Republicans from the Northeast, where the party lost almost a third of its House seats, and from the Midwest, where it lost 15 percent. As moderates and independents abandoned the party, its center of gravity moved rightward. In order to maintain the support of the party that reluctantly nominated him, John McCain had to choose a vice president who represented the base. Indeed, never before has someone with such deep roots in the movement been on a major party ticket. ...Nevertheless, the movement was at the forefront of her mayoral campaign. According to Stein, a national antiabortion organization sent out postcards to Wasilla voters on Palin's behalf. There was a whisper campaign that Stein, a Lutheran, was actually Jewish. Some Palin supporters suggested that Stein and his wife, Karen Marie, weren't really married because they didn't have the same last name. "We had to produce a marriage certificate just to demonstrate that," said Stein. "I believe that was Sarah's campaign committee who brought that up." This good Nation article (not much of a fan of the magazine) goes on... take a look, then get motivated to vote and get others to vote as well. RSS