I'm finding it extremely hard to write a post that actually conveys how weird it is that John McCain put a secessionist on his ticket. But make no mistake: Sarah Palin is a secessionist, or at least is sympathetic enough to the cause that she belongs to a political group whose mission is to "seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution." I guess the least bad explanation here is that the Alaska Independence Party has some clout in Alaska, and Palin was an ambitious pol willing to put aside her distaste for secession if it would advance her career, but is that really so helpful? That she was willing to partner up with a group that's fundamentally more radical on secession than the Nation of Islam? That doesn't worry anyone on the McCain campaign? There's a worrying emergence of extremist tendencies in Palin. So far as we know -- and we're only about five days in -- she's been enthusiastic about Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, the Alaska Independence Party, and Ron Paul. In other words, she's allied herself with radical culture warriors, radical conservative economics, radical secessionists, and radical libertarian/isolationists. This is someone who's pretty comfortable on the fringe of the right wing.
