Palin in Comparison: Immigration and National Security

After the economy, probably the biggest concern voters have is how we'll get out of the Bush administration's quagmire in Iraq.

As with any VP pick, Sarah Palin is one health emergency--one cancer recurrence--from the presidency if something were to happen to John McCain.

Here's what those dried up talking heads on Scarborough's Morning Joe think:

How about that? Even right wing pundits are right once a millennium. But let's do our due diligence on Palin as we would any other candidate.

National Security

Here's what I was able to discern about Palin's vision of national security:

*crickets*

But other people have offered their opinions on her qualifications to handle national security issues:

Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina: "Governor Palin took on Ted Stevens. If she can take him on, she can take on the Russians." Stevens, a Republican senator, is facing corruption charges and running for re-election. [Palin worked for Stevens' 527 group from 2003-2005--so much for "taking him on"!]
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: "Palin is commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard." The state's Guard has about 4,000 members. [And Palin has no oversight when it comes to deployment of the Alaska National Guard for national defense.]
From McCain's wife, Cindy, came a geographic assessment of qualification: "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So, it's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here."

First of all, I wasn't aware that Russia posed a genuine, imminent threat to our national security. After some deep googling, I see that apparently the Bush administration alleges Russia (plus China) poses a potential threat in its capacity to wage cyber-terrorism; but why on earth geographic proximity shared between Russia and Alaska is at all relevant to this issue is beyond me, as the whole point of cyber-terrorism is to wreak destruction from anywhere in the world. Inveterate McCain family emailer Cindy McCain should know this.

Second, Palin's extreme lack of experience in national security issues means that we have to infer her positions from the coloration of those politicos around her.

Does she agree with McCain's position on national security, one involving opening up a new front in Iran complete with additional troops, and maintaining a long-term occupation of Iraq for "100 years or more"?

If Palin supported Forbes in 2000 as the McCain campaign claims, does she then agree that the U.S. should act unilaterally without U.N. cooperation, that defense spending should be increased, and we should not be involved in humanitarian interventions such as Haiti and Somalia?

Immigration

For most centrists to conservatives, national security is bound up with our national immigration policies, as their argument is that open borders invite terrorists to come to our shores and create mayhem. Leaving aside the question of how or whether intricacies in asylum law and the granting of H1-B visas to immigrant high tech workers are a tool to increase "homeland security," let's take this commingling of immigration policy and national security as unquestionably intertwined as most conservatives do.

What then is Palin's position on immigration?

Again, *crickets.*

If we have to infer her position from a past politician she's supported (if only to make him "feel welcome in her state"), then as a backer of right-wing anti-Semite and racial extremist Pat Buchanan in 1996 and 1999, she probably would agree with Buchanan.

As recently as June 4, 2007, Buchanan advised Mitt Romney with regard to the then-pending immigration bill in Congress:

What is happening to us? An immigrant invasion of the United States from the Third World, as America's white majority is no longer even reproducing itself. Since Roe v. Wade, America has aborted 45 million of her children. And Asia, Africa and Latin America have sent 45 million of their children to inherit the estate the aborted American children never saw. God is not mocked.

And white America is in flight.

Buchanan believes that non-whites are inherently unassimilable and that immigration to this country should be curtailed until it can be like the mostly white majority nation of Buchanan's youth. This is the subject of Pitchfork Pat's latest book, _State of Emergency_, which advocates that Bush be impeached because he's allowed too many Mexicans to enter the U.S.

I can't think of a more toxic form of nakedly racist white supremacy than what Buchanan's peddling. It makes George W. Bush and John McCain look like long-haired peacenik hippies by contrast. Not exactly a badge of honor to say you got behind Pitchfork Pat--at any time in his ignoble career.

Which makes it all the more difficult to reconcile Palin's flirtation?/wholehearted embrace? of Buchanan's ideas with McCain's support of amnesty for immigrant "guest workers."

I seldom link to conservative sites, but here is the February 11, 2008 issue of The American Conservative documenting McCain's flip-flops on amnesty--first he was for, now he's against.

The only thing that's clear about McCain's stance on immigration is that he's decided with Palin's pick as VP that white evangelicals who respond to Buchanan's "white America for white people" extremist views are more worth courting than the Latino voters of his home state of Arizona that he pandered to previously.

When it comes to national security and immigration, Palin's stance on issues of key importance to a Vice President of the entire states of America, and not just a VP to the 49th state, is glaringly and alarmingly empty.

Here's what McCain's choice of Palin as VP leaves us with:

1. We don't know who Sarah Palin is on important issues like national security or immigration; there's simply too little past record or voting performance to go by,

2. We don't want someone who's a chameleon and takes on the colors of whatever marriage-by-political-necessity politico she happens to be next to. Has she never given any thought to statecraft, to the larger issues of the day? If Hillary Clinton supporters find it easy to become Stepford Voters and support Palin, who is Clinton's ideological opposite in political stances, then Governor Palin herself is a Stepford Candidate by virtue of having to adopt political positions of the alpha male closest to her out of hasty expediency.

3. What does this say about McCain's judgment in choosing in Palin a VP who echoes Democratic Party talking points? McCain's previous emphasis on experience? His wish to pander to some voters and abandon others?

4. What does this say about America's receptivity to Palin, a right-wing extremist in beauty queen/hockey mom's clothing? I think it means we need to get beyond looks.

A Stepford Candidate, like the Stepford Voters who would support her on the flimsiest of reasons, deserves scrutiny: It's Policy, Not Personality.

The Obama-Biden '08 Ticket

In presidential candidate Obama and vice presidential candidate Biden, we have two experienced legislators who have mastery over national security issues by virtue of senate briefings, briefings through their legislative aide staffs, and the wealth of experience gathered from senate colleagues through committee assignments and sponsorship of bills directing U.S. national and foreign policy.

Obama's recent visit to the Middle East and discussions with Maliki of Iraq about a timetable for withdrawal of American troops not only confirmed that the Democratic presidential candidate was correct in his longstanding position, but forced the Bush administration to start echoing Obama's talking points and forced the McCain campaign to follow Obama's lead by hedging on "timetables" with Orwellian doublespeak about "horizons" for withdrawal.

On Afghanistan, as recently as Obama's official acceptance of the Democratic Party presidential nomination last week, Obama said, "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell--but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

As Commander-in-Chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease.

Vice Presidential candidate Biden is equally well-informed and ready to lead, having served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as chair. A summary of his positions on national security can be found here.

Additionally, Obama's view of a post 9/11 world involves stronger anti-terrorist measures as well as securing America's energy policy and separating it from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and the tangle of politics and alliances there.

On immigration, Obama takes a humane and disciplined view. So long as borders are secure, he supports family reunification policies that are fair for legal immigrants and disallow undocumented immigrants to skip ahead in line. Obama balances a measured earning of the rights and privileges of citizenship with the legacy of openness to newcomers that is America's greatest strength.

We've had well over 19 months to thoroughly explore, question, challenge, and add our voices to Obama's plan for America if he's elected president. I think we voters acting in good faith know who he is and what he stands for. It's the same with Joe Biden.

But for voters considering McCain, 2 months of quickly trumped-up political positions from Governor Palin, whose credentials on national security and immigration are disturbingly thin, will not be enough to reassure voters that we have someone who can fill the president's shoes in an emergency. Her choice as Vice President on the McCain ticket is risky, poorly thought out, and asks voters to make vast leaps in supposition.

Next to the Obama-Biden '08 ticket, the McCain ticket is Palin in Comparison.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k. She is the proud daughter of immigrants.