Alaska Family Council

Palin's Well-Oiled Machine Rolls On

Submitted by Kyle on August 27, 2009 - 12:59pm

I have never really understood the Religious Right's love of Sarah Palin, especially in light of the fact that she repeatedly stiffs them.

Within days of bursting onto the national scene as John McCain's running mate, Palin backed out of her scheduled appearance at the Republican National Coalition for Life's reception during the Republican National Convention, a move that enraged event organizer Phyllis Schlafly.

While Palin's need to back out of that particular event could be justified by the fact that, having suddenly become a vice presidential nominee, she obviously had bigger priorities than attending Schalfly's luncheon, in retrospect it turns out that it was actually just the first in a long series of such snubs.

As the Anchorage Daily News reports, Palin has now done it again:

Organizers of an Anchorage event that has been billing Sarah Palin for weeks as a star speaker were left scrambling Wednesday after learning that the former governor won't be there for tonight's event and claims to have never been asked.

It would be at least the fourth time in recent months that an anticipated Palin speech has fallen through after Palin and her camp disputed they had ever confirmed it. That includes the brouhaha over whether she'd speak at the annual congressional Republican fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., this summer.

This time it's an event promoting an Alaska ballot measure aimed at making it illegal for teens to get an abortion without telling their parents. The Alaska Family Council has been advertising that Palin would give a speech and become the first official signer of the ballot petition tonight at ChangePoint, the Anchorage megachurch.

Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said Wednesday, in response to inquiries from the Daily News about tonight's event, that "this is the first we have ever heard of a speech." She said Palin is out of state and won't be there.

Stapleton declined to provide details on where Palin is and what she is doing.

Alaska Family Council President Jim Minnery said it was news to him when a reporter told him that Stapleton was saying Palin had no knowledge of the speech, which his group has been promoting. He said organizers have been talking to Palin "contacts" for weeks about it.

"All we can do is take people at their word that we've worked with in the past," Minnery said. "We've been working for several weeks on the event, promoting it very heavily. It would be a grave disappointment if she doesn't show up but the show will still go on."

I know we probably shouldn't expect much for a governor who can't even bother to finish her one-term in office, but Palin's seeming inability to honor even her most basic commitments is truly laughable.

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Palin Bucks Right, Appoints Former Planned Parenthood Board Member to Supreme Court

Submitted by Kyle on March 5, 2009 - 2:39pm

Last week we noted that Sarah Palin was facing a dilemma rooted in her state's "Missouri Plan"-like structure for appointing state Supreme Court justices because the list of candidates she was required to choose from did not necessarily reflect her views.

This issue didn't seem to be generating all that much coverage but it did generate interest from the state's Alaska Family Council, which urged its activists to contact Palin and pressure her to choose Eric Smith over Morgan Christen, saying that Smith was "more conservative" than Christen, who was, among other things, on the board of Planned Parenthood in the mid-1990s.

But Palin was apparently not swayed by the AFC's efforts and went ahead and appointed Christen:

Governor Sarah Palin selected Anchorage Superior Court Judge Morgan Christen to the Alaska Supreme Court. Christen is the 20th justice appointed to the Court.

“Alaska’s Supreme Court bears the awesome responsibility of ensuring that our court system administers justice in firm accordance with the principles laid down in our state Constitution,” said Governor Palin. “I have every confidence that Judge Christen has the experience, intellect, wisdom and character to be an outstanding Supreme Court justice.”

The Alaska Daily News reports that AFC president Jim Minnery is not happy and says that Palin will be getting a good talking to when they see each other at an upcoming benefit:

The head of the Alaska Family Council -- a Christian pro-family, anti-abortion group -- on Wednesday sent an e-mail to thousands of people asking them to urge Palin to pick Smith, not Christen.

The governor's office received about 100 letters, e-mails and faxes from the public about the Supreme Court appointment, including some from the family council, Palin's spokeswoman, Sharon Leighow, said in an e-mail. That was not an unusual number, Leighow said.

The family council plea, from group president Jim Minnery, said Smith was "more conservative" and that Christen would be "another activist on the Court." In an interview, Minnery said that was the "general consensus" but he had no specifics.

"I'll be seeing the governor tomorrow. We'll have a good chat," Minnery said after Christen's appointment was announced. He said that Palin is introducing the speaker Thursday evening at a benefit lecture in Anchorage for the family council.

As we noted last time, when Missouri's Republican Governor Matt Blunt faced this sort of situation back in 2007, right-wing groups savaged him, saying "too many politicians have suffered the fate of trying to have issues both ways, and this may be the final strike for Gov. Blunt."

Will Palin face the same sort of outrage?