What do local Alaskans think about Sarah Palin? That was my approach, wanting to get past the pundits and Washington insider takes on McCain's new partner. So I started calling people I thought would give me a clearer perspective-- Democratic party leaders in Alaska.

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While many Democrats are laughing at McCain's “folly,” my interviews with local Alaskans in the last 24 hours  suggest McCain’s selection was smarter than they perceive. If Democratic attacks on Palin are to gain traction, they won’t be about inexperience. They’ll be about how much she could be like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez.

Sarah-- everyone in Alaska just calls her Sarah, "just like Hillary," is VERRRRY popular, with ratings  as high as 90%.

 She's known as a populist reformer, since she took on Randy Rudrick, the head of the state Republican party. Rudrick was fined because of her intervention. It seems he was, working for the state, and on state time and pay, making Republican party calls, sending out emails on state-owned computers. Sarah reported him. He's still the Republican party  head and needless to say, they don't get along well.

Sarah, her husband Todd and four of the five kids live at home in Wasilla, just under an hour from Anchorage.  The fifth son enlisted to fight in Iraq.
She commutes to Juneau, but doesn't go there often because she's set up an office in Anchorage. There has been pressure, from corporate interests to move the capitol to Anchorage, so her practice serves their interests well. The easier to meet with lobbyists, perhaps?

Democratic Committeewoman Kathy Cross, of nearby Mat Su Borough observed She cleans for herself, cooks for herself and her family, drives herself to work, was even in a fender bender recently. She very modest, very approachable.”

No wonder everyone loves her.

The chink in Mrs.  average's armor may be “troopergate.” She fired the supervisor of her sister's former policeman husband when the man refused to fire her brother-in-law. Seems her brother-in-law was in a nasty divorce with her sister.

This firing led to  the state legislature investigating Sarah for abuse of power. She denied it, saying the man had tasered a child. But later, after it came out that a number of her friends and family had been advocating for the firing- which she rejected any knowledge of, she changed her story.

Now, it turns out that this isn't the first time Sarah fired someone. When she was the Mayor of Wasilla, (about 5,000 population at the time,) she fired the Chief of Police. This led to a lawsuit and an out of court settlement paid for by the public.

More than one leader in the Alaska Democratic party told me, off the record, that her reputation was "my way or the highway. "When she ran the city of Wasilla-- she was the same way—“reward friends, punish enemies, get personal." 

These sound like the kinds of personality characteristics Dick Cheney could relate to. And let's not forget dear, pliable, ever cooperative Alberto Gonzalez and his team of partisan players who hired and fired based upon the most illegal criteria. Sarah might fit in very nicely and, with that pretty face, she just might evade comparisons to Darth Vader or Cruella, even though her history shows the potential to be worse.

The problem is, this pretty mom, whose husband Todd is such a regular union guy (funny how his employer BP Oil has let him take off time as needed, what with his wife being gov and all) will be very likable to millions.

Patti Higgins, head of the Alaska Democratic party, told me she fills in a lot of gaps for McCain. “He's old. she's young. He has a lot of houses. She has one.”

You can go on and on with the ways she's the yin to McCain's yang.

He's filthy rich, thanks to his wife. She's average income.

He's become an obedient suckup to the Republican, neocon, evangelical powers that be. She's a reformer who turned in the head of the Republican party.

McCain has minimal religious cred. She belongs to a pentacostal church.

He has a short fuse and a temper. She's a sweetie who talks with a folksy accent.

He's a patrician son and grandson of admirals. She's plain folks.

Add it up and McCain made a smart move. Sure, she's a total joke when it comes to being prepared to take over if McCain gets sick or dies on the job. But think of the tens of millions who voted for idiot son George Bush because he'd be fun to have a beer with. People vote on personality, which Sarah has plenty of.. Even the Alaska Dems I interviewed were charmed by and liked her. This is not going to be easy and it sure isn't all over, as so many Dems seem to think.

If the Dems want to turn Sarah Palin from asset to liability, they need to find and highlight  her dark side.

Talking about incompetence will only make her appeal even more to the voters who found Dubya so appealing.  Even the troopergate approach may be fraught with danger, if McCain’s spinmeisters can frame her as protecting her sister from a bad guy. This will sell to those former Hillary supporters who are already angry about losing their first woman in the white house opportunity.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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