Who Is Sarah Palin?

The word on the street is that McCain is picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee. Wikipedia has a glowing biography, but Project Vote Smart (the first place I usually go to brush up on candidates and politicians) just says this:

Governor Sarah Heath Palin REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO PROVIDE ANY RESPONSES TO CITIZENS ON ISSUES THROUGH THE 2006 NATIONAL POLITICAL AWARENESS TEST WHEN ASKED TO DO SO BY

Key national leaders of both major parties including:
John McCain, Republican Senator
Geraldine Ferraro, Former Democratic Congresswoman
Michael Dukakis, Former Democratic Governor
Bill Frenzel, Former Republican Congressman
Richard Kimball, Project Vote Smart President

Over 100 news organizations throughout the nation also urged their candidates to supply their issue positions through the National Political Awareness Test.

On The Issues is also pretty good, but it doesn't have all that much on Palin either. I suspect that her support for ANWR drilling (which McCain opposes - but we'll see about that) will be a big point in the coming weeks.

Other than that, does anybody know anything more about her positions on the issues? Anything similar to Project Vote Smart or On the Issues out there? All I really know right now is that she's a former beauty pageant runner-up who played high school basketball and made the winning point one time.

UPDATE: This is what McCain says about ANWR now: (1) "ANWR is a pristine place. I don't support drilling there. I just feel that it's an area that, one, it would take years, I think, before you could actually exploit it;" (2) "ANWR is a pristine place and if they found oil in the Grand Canyon, I don’t think I’d drill in the Grand Canyon."

UPDATE II: Looks like she acted as a whistleblower against corruption in Alaska, which is definitely good. Lord knows they need it up there.

UPDATE III: I know that this is going to come up really soon, so I'd just like to point out again that the Department of Energy has recently said that ANWR drilling will only affect the price of gas by $0.02/gallon ($0.75/barrel) in the year 2025. Just saying. Drilling is now the centerpiece of McCain's campaign, and we should be clear up front as to what the costs and benefits really are here.

UPDATE IV: It looks like she's still in Alaska.

UPDATE V: Confirmed.



UPDATE VI: Looks like she might be a creationist.

Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, "I believe we have a creator." She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact. "I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she said.

UPDATE VII: Here is the Obama campaign's response.

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."

UPDATE VIII:


UPDATE IX: On global warming: "“I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made." So I guess that this beauty pageant runner-up thinks that she knows more than the world's best biologists and climate scientists.

UPDATE X: I'll be writing more about this later.

Like McCain, Palin believes that oil drilling is the only solution to our energy problems. “I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem,” she says. She supports more drilling in protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge, once attacking McCain for his “close-mindedness on ANWR.”

UPDATE XI: As you'd expect, that glowing Wikipedia biography had been doctored. Check out the Wikipedia Scanner tool in the sidebar to look into who changed her page and when.

UPDATE XII: Are you kidding me? McCain only met with Palin once before picking her? That seems like a ridiculously irresponsible move in what should be a very serious election.

UPDATE XIII: Looks like she is now being tested for Project Vote Smart ("Governor Sarah Heath Palin is currently being tested through the 2008 Political Courage Test. "). More on that later.

UPDATE XIV:


UPDATE XV: Her claims about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere are actually false. She starts her campaign off by lying about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, which she actually strongly supported at the time, and only abandoned after it became a national joke.

UPDATE XVI: Here's video of a Palin debate from 2006, before she became Governor.


UPDATE XVII: Here's video of Palin when she was a local sportscaster (her education is in journalism, in case you were wondering). My favorite part is the caption used to describe the dog race: "LOTS OF DOGS."


UPDATE XVIII: Good god, this is brutal:


UPDATE XIX: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that"

UPDATE XX: Jesus Christ. . . .


UPDATE XXI: More on Palin here. Joseph Romm points out some of Palin's energy lies here.