Not a radical secessionist: Sarah Palin, registered Alaska Republican continuously since 1982

Another pathetic, disgusting smear attempt. What will it be tomorrow? "Palin is evil clone produced from long-frozen embryo salvaged from Eva Braun's corpse"? (Subheading: "Nevertheless continues to oppose abortion, stem-cell research.")

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Governors have a public relations role on behalf of their states. Sarah Palin has embraced that duty cheerfully and very effectively. For a very good example, watch this video clip from June 25, 2007, of her granting comedian Craig Ferguson's application for "honorary citizenship" in Alaska. Gov. Palin is so very friendly that Ferguson began joking about her "naughty librarian vibe" and claiming "I think she's kinda comin' onto me a little bit."

Obviously Craig Ferguson isn't the only person who's drawn too broad an inference from Gov. Palin's warmth and enthusiasm. Based in part on this gubernatorial welcome video that Gov. Palin made for members of the Alaskan Independence Party convention in 2008, the Hard Left bloggers jumped to the conclusion that Gov. Palin was once a member of that party. "Scandal!" they trumpeted, "These are right-wing fringe fascists who want to secede from the United States, and Palin was one of them!"

Never mind that Gov. Palin was obviously speaking as a representative of a competing party in the video (emphasis mine):

Your party plays an important role in our state's politics. I've always said that competition is so good. And that applies to political parties as well.

Someone found a set of other creaky homemade videos of some geezer gentleman from the AIP droning on in a hotel conference room at some party function, during which he mentioned Gov. Palin's name and claimed that she'd been an AIP member before she became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. Someone else from the AIP claimed to have first-hand knowledge that this was true.

The Hard Left bloggers captured the interest of Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic, Jake Tapper at ABC News, and Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times, all of whom ran stories treating these allegations as well-established fact, another in a series of embarrassing disclosures, yada yada yada.

But within hours, the McCain campaign had posted a sharp denial online. Shortly after that, as reported and then re-distributed by the inestimable and invaluable Ed Morrissey at HotAir, the campaign was distributing .pdf files of Palin's voter registration records going back to 1982. These documents conclusively show that Palin registered as a Republican then, and never changed that registration despite several address changes in the interim. One such address change (on page 5 of the .pdf file) is dated August 7, 1995, which would be exactly during the period Gov. Palin was a Wasilla city councilman, but not yet mayor.

The campaign also said, in a follow-up post (emphasis in original):

The Governor did appear at the AIP convention in 2000, when the convention was held in Wasilla. This would seem to be the only decent thing to do, given her responsibilities as Mayor of Wasilla, but apparently Tapper believes the press is owed further explanation.

So we have the Governor of Alaska's denial, backed up by detailed documentary proof, against speculation and people who may charitably be described as "unreliable," and more accurately be described as "cranks."

KUDOS to the McCain campaign for its quick and devastating response. The marginally smarter dupes folks like Tapper began backing off yesterday evening — reporting the campaign's position and gently disassociating themselves from their "sources" — even before the documentation came out. By 12:21 pm Eastern today (Sep. 2), Tapper was writing:

Officials of the AIP say Palin was once a member, but the McCain campaign — providing what it says is complete voter registration documentation — says Palin has been according to official records a lifelong Republican.

(Which to be honest seems more in keeping with the ambitious pol. Republicans have a much better track record than the AIP.)

Oh, how very precious! Yes, indeed, let's be honest, Jake! Just for the fun of it! After all, that would be a "change we can believe in."

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UPDATE (Tue Sep 2 @ 2:10pm): A reader has emailed me to predict the themes for Thursday, to follow up on Wednesday's cloned-embryo-from-Eva-Braun smear. Confidential informants have told me that dKos is now joint-venturing with FireDogLake and MyDD to tell a tale that involves Gov. Palin, snowmobiles (or snowmachines, as they're called in Alaska), the winter solstice, and zombies. Possibly in ANWR.

Someday this post may rise to the No. 1 response for search engine searches on "Palin + Eva Braun" and "Palin + zombies + snowmachines." But there actually are other competitors already.

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UPDATE (Tue Sep 3 @ 2:15pm): Commenter John Fay below asked questions which made clear to me a defect in my original post here, one of a type I'm particularly prone to, which is assuming too much pre-existing knowledge of legal topics on the part of my readers.

In a state like Texas, where I live, "party membership" is a loosey-goosey thing. We don't "register" our party affiliations here as such, and there is no such thing as a "registered Republican" or a "registered Democrat." When one votes in a particular party's primary, one may not then legally vote in another party's primary for that same election; they stamp your voter-registration card to show which primary you've voted in. And the fact of which party's primary one has voted in on that day (though not the particulars of one's vote) becomes a matter of public record. This sometimes leads to confusion when someone has engaged in "strategic voting" (by casting a "spoiling vote" in an opposing party's primary), but with our "open primaries," such potential confusion is inherent in the system. One can call (or refuse to call) oneself pretty much whatever one likes without fear of contradiction.

Alaska is not such a state, however. Its election laws have been changed substantially over the last 20 years, in part due to litigation involving smaller political parties. Before 2000, Alaska had a blanket primary system with a single ballot that listed every candidate, regardless of party affiliation that allowed voters to choose freely among them. The candidate of each party who won the largest number of votes became that party's nominee in the ensuing general election. In response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a similar system in California, the Alaska legislature revised its primary system in 2001. That resulted in a 2005 decision from the Alaska Supreme Court that sustained a challenge to the new system brought by two small parties, and its election laws, particularly with respect to who can vote in which primary elections, have been revised yet again in response.

What's pertinent to this discussion, however, is that continuously throughout this period, Alaska has maintained a system in which to be registered to vote, voters must either register as a member of an established political party (of which there are several possibilities) or as an independent (which, in Alaska, actually has separate sub-categories including "nonpartisan," "undeclared," and "other"). But to be registered to vote at all, Alaska law requires you to have one, and only one, of these choices. You cannot simultaneously be a "registered Republican" and a "registered [anything else, whether Democrat, Green, Libertarian, AIP, undeclared, nonpartisan, independent, or whatever]." The law simply excludes — negates, makes impossible — that possibility.

Of course, you can change your party registration by submitting a new form, just like you can change your address. Each of the various change of address forms included in the .pdf file furnished by the McCain-Palin campaign represented an opportunity in which Sarah Palin could have changed her party registration from Republican, but instead, in each of them, she again checked "Republican." The front page of that .pdf file, a computer printout showing her historic registration status, confirms that her status has never changed since it was first set by her in 1982.

This is conclusive, folks. You can say, if you're conspiracy-minded, that in her heart she had some secret reservation or intention — that could be said of George W. Bush, too, I suppose; maybe he's a secret Democrat at heart — but in the eyes of the law as defined by the State of Alaska, Sarah Heath Palin is and has been a Republican continuously since 1982. That's not subject to debate. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own view of reality, and in the reality in which we live, those are the facts.

Depending on which primary you're talking about, her continuous registration as a Republican may or may not have prevented her from having had even an opportunity to vote for other parties' primary election candidates. And of course, in general elections, even a registered Democrat can vote for the Republican nominee. We still have secret ballots in this country (although that principle is currently under dramatic assault by the Democratic Party with respect to elections on whether a company's workforce should become unionized or not). So could Sarah Palin secretly have cast her vote for someone other than a Republican candidate in one or another office in races over the years? Of course she could have. But so what? I've occasionally been a ticket-splitter myself, especially on Texas judicial elections.

Let's turn, for a moment, from the law and back to logic. Back up a step, and consider this entire "scandal." The Hard Left wants you to think Sarah Palin should be an unacceptable GOP vice presidential nominee because, they insist, she has "ties" to or perhaps just "sympathies" with the Alaska Independence Party. They want you to think that's scandalous because, they contend, those AIP folks are part of a radical political "fringe" that can't be trusted. Okay, if you grant that premise, then why should you possibly believe the AIP people who claim that she's sympathetic to them? By definition (as these Hard Lefties would have it), the AIP people are kooks who can't be trusted! The Hard Left can't have it both ways.

As for the "Manchurian Candidate" meme — that the AIP people have urged their sympathizers to "infiltrate" the two majority parties — consider the logic of that assertion specifically with respect to Gov. Sarah Palin. If Sarah Palin were really committed to Alaska's secession from the United States, she's already in the optimum position to try to accomplish that result. The very last thing she'd ever do is leave the Alaksa Governor's mansion and command of the Alaska National Guard to move to Washington, D.C. and a job where her only official power is to preside over the U.S. Senate (with an ability to vote there only when there's a tie).

The "Manchurian Candidate" meme is nonsense being promoted by barking moonbats who are looking for very, very gullible targets. Don't be gullible. If you're not persuaded by the documentation and the law and the word of Sarah Palin, then use your common sense.

Finally: I believe in plaudits when due to those on the left, and this time they go to Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, who's prominently retracted her earlier post and notes that one of the original sources for the AIP membership claim is backing off too.