The Palin Delivered the Down Payment, But How About the Principal?

She did a great job. She hauled a great big ole slab of red moose meat into the Xcel Center in St. Paul and threw it out for the hungry wolves. She solidified the base of the Republican Party.

'Course, solidifying the base early in September kinda highlights the problem McCain has, doesn't it? Forget the swing voters! Let's go get all those anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-gay culture warriors on board. To hell with everyone else.

But the questions about Palin remain. Eventually, maybe, her McCain palace guard will allow her in front of the press.

1. What exactly is her opinion about the Iraq War. One minute she says it's a "task from God" and the next (after her own son gets called up?) it's apparently a "war over energy sources" (i.e., oil?). In March she was far off the McCain reservation: "I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."

2. When is she going to come clean about her actual record on pork-barrel spending? She SUPPORTED the "bridge to nowhere" during her 2006 campaign for governor (here). She didn't decide to oppose the bridge until AFTER Congress killed the earmark and it became a national embarrassment. As mayor of Wasilla, she hired a private lobbyist, sought, and eventually received $27 million in earmarks from the federal government.

3. She denies man-made global warming, and as governor she is suing the federal government to lift the protected species status of polar bears. In 2007 she illegally established a $150 bounty per animal on "fly-by wolf hunting," which was soon overturned by a state court.

4. Speaking to the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June, Palin said it was clearly "God's will" that a $30 billion national gas pipeline project be built.

5. She believes in teaching creationism in public schools.

6. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, slashed state funding to help teenage mothers, and advocates abstinence-only sex-education programs. In other words, she has the gall to declare that her own daughter's "choice" to have a baby is nobody's business but wants us to elect her so that she can empower the federal government to remove most such choices from other women.

7. Palin cheered on the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for secession of the state from the federal union.

That's just a bare START on some issues and areas of concern that deserve a few questions, followed by a few answers.