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Sarah Palin is the Governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate for the 2008 United States presidential election. The following are Palin's known positions on political issues.

Social issues

Abortion and sex education

Palin is pro-life and is opposed to abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, except when necessary to save the life of the mother. In 2006, while running for governor, Palin was asked what she would do if her own daughter were raped and became pregnant; she responded that she would "choose life." She and her husband stated that they had "faith that every baby is created for a good purpose." Palin has been a member of Feminists for Life since 2006.

Palin supports abstinence-based sex education, as well as teaching about contraception. She does not however favor what she called "explicit" sex education programs.

Education and creationism

As governor, Palin supported full funding for K–12 education, as well as "early funding of education", a program that would give school districts more predictability.

While running for Governor of Alaska and asked about the teaching of creationism along with evolution in public school science classes, Palin answered: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both"; she further clarified that open debate between the two ideas should not be prohibited if it came up in discussion, but that creationism did not specifically need to be part of the curriculum.

Equal pay

According to the McCain campaign, Palin favors the concept of equal pay for women (the abolition of wage differences based on gender), but opposes the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have allowed more time to bring suit under the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

Gay unions

Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998. Whilst campaigning for election as Governor of Alaska in 2006, Palin declared that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment, although she said she has good friends who are gay and does not wish to judge gay people.

In December 2006, following long-running litigation and a 2005 ruling, the Supreme Court of Alaska ordered the state to begin paying health and retiree benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees. Declaring that there were "no more judicial options to pursue" to avoid paying the benefits, Palin agreed to comply with the ruling. At the same time, in her first legislative act, Palin signed a bill ordering a non-binding referendum for a constitutional amendment to deny the benefits.

Palin subsequently vetoed a bill that would have denied the benefits, declaring that "signing this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office" due to the state Supreme Court ruling. Although the referendum passed in April 2007 with 53% of voters supporting a constitutional amendment, a bill to place such an amendment on the ballot in November 2008 stalled in the state legislature.

Legal issues and ethics

Capital punishment

Palin has declared herself in favor of capital punishment. She has stated: "If the legislature passed a death penalty law, I would sign it. We have a right to know that someone who rapes and murders a child or kills an innocent person in a drive by shooting will never be able to do that again." In a televised debate in 2006, Palin's responded to a question about the death penalty by saying that for crimes such as the murder of a child, "My goodness, hang 'em up, yeah."

Gun rights

Palin is a life-long hunter, a strong proponent of the Second Amendment, and supports gun-safety education for children. Palin is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, and is popular among gun rights activists. Sandra Froman, a member of the NRA Board of Directors, described McCain's selection of Palin as "outstanding."

Drugs

Although she did smoke marijuana when she was younger, she says that she did not enjoy it and she does not want to return to the days of de-criminalized marijuana in Alaska; Palin regards methamphetamine as a greater social threat than cannabis.

Jury rights

On August 31, 2007, Palin signed a Jury Rights Day Proclamation, commemorating September 5, 2007 as the 337th anniversary of the acquittal, in defiance of the legal direction of the bench, of William Penn and William Mead for preaching a Quaker sermon.

Stem cell research

Palin stated in 2006 that because she believes stem cell research causes the in destruction of life, it is inconsistent with her pro-life position and she does not support this research.

Lobbyists

According to Newsweek Palin has given jobs to friends and appointed lobbyists to oversee industries they used to represent.

As mayor of Wasilla, she hired the town's first Washington lobbyist to direct federal earmarks to the city. The lobbyist was paid $140,000 and brought $27 million worth of projects to the small town.

Government Spending

Shortly after becoming governor, Palin canceled a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18 km) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine. Palin also followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased. She put the plane on Ebay, but when that did not result in a bid, she sold it through an aircraft broker to a business man for $2.1 million, approximately $600,000 less than the State of Alaska had paid for it two years earlier. She used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects including an expansion of the Port of Anchorage and the Fire Island wind energy project, and reduced the construction budget to nearly $1.6 billion.

"Bridge to Nowhere"

In Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, she supported the building of a Gravina Island Bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island (population 50), better known outside the state as the "Bridge to Nowhere." Palin ran on a "build-the-bridge" platform, arguing that it was essential for local prosperity.. As Palin said in August 2006, according to the Ketchikan (Alaska) Daily News:

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

After Palin was elected governor, the newly-christened Bridge to Nowhere became a symbol for wildly excessive and wasteful federal spending nationwide. Bowing to criticism, Congress replaced the $223 million earmark for the bridge with a $223 million infrastructure grant to Alaska to use at its discretion. One month after John McCain attacked the bridge, Palin switched her position too.. According to Newsweek:

In an astonishing pivot, she began using the rhetoric of the projects' opponents. Now she talks as if she always opposed the funding. She used one of her stock lines in her nomination acceptance speech: "I told the Congress, 'Thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

(Ketchikan's Mayor Bob Weinstein criticized Palin for using the very term 'Bridge to Nowhere' in her vice-presidential nomination acceptance speech because Palin had termed that name for the bridge "insulting" during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, when she campaigned on her original "build the bridge" platform.)

According to Reuters, Palin's decision to cancel the bridge "earn her admirers from earmark critics and budget hawks from around the nation. The move also thrust her into the spotlight as a reform-minded newcomer." In an article titled, "Bridge leads McCain to running mate Palin", the Associated Press said canceling the bridge was "the first identifiable link connecting Palin and McCain," soon followed by "whispers of Palin being an ideal GOP running mate".

Although she canceled the bridge, Palin continued to spend $25 million from the $223 million earmark to build the road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone. State officials said "they were going ahead with the $25 million road because the money would otherwise have to be returned to the federal government." . The cancellation of the bridge did not lead Palin to return any of the remaining $197 million in the earmark to the Federal Government. Palin's campaign coordinator in Ketchikan, Republican Mike Elerding, says, "She said 'thanks but no thanks,' but they kept the money." According to Palin’s communications director Bill McAlister, the bridge "isn’t necessarily dead"; it may still be built with "a less costly design.” Palin changed her mind on the bridge, he said, when “she saw that Alaska was being perceived as taking from the country and not giving, and that impression bothered her and she wants to change it. … I think that Sarah Palin is someone who has the courage to re-evaluate situations as they developed.”

Tax

As governor, Palin helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits.

Energy and environment

Oil and gas development

As Governor, Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. She has also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. Palin has announced plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisors to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska.

In an interview with Time, Palin argued that energy independence through ANWR drilling was essential to reducing American dependence on hostile foreign regimes. While on a state-funded trip to speak at a graduation ceremony, Palin urged the students to pray that God's will be done in unifying people to get a gas pipeline built.

Global warming

On August 29, 2008, Palin stated in an interview: "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made."

Endangered species

In January 2008, Palin wrote an opinion column for The New York Times in which she opposed the listing of polar bears as an threatened species, claiming that she had based her position on a comprehensive review of expert scientific opinion. While asserting that "polar bears are magnificent animals...worthy of our utmost efforts to protect them and their Arctic habitat," Palin defended her opposition to listing the animal as endangered by stating, "The possible listing of a healthy species like the polar bear would be based on uncertain modeling of possible effects. This is simply not justified." For Steven A. Cohen, Executive Director, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, this is "the most distressing part" of Palin's opinion column because of "its attempt to contrast 'science' to 'modeling'." Cohen points out that, obviously, "models are just as 'scientific' as the other methods used to understand our world," and concludes about Palin that "if elected leaders are going to make policy based on scientific information, they need to develop at least a modest level of scientific literacy themselves."

State biologists disagreed with Palin's position, as did the United States Department of the Interior, who listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act on May 14, 2008. In response, Palin threatened to sue the federal government over their decision, again questioned the scientific basis for the listing, and warned that it would adversely affect energy development in Alaska. Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity responded by stating, "She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming."

Palin also opposed the placement of beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet on the endangered species list, on economic grounds. Palin cited state scientists who claimed that hunting was the only factor causing the whales' decline, and that the hunting has been effectively controlled through cooperative agreements with Alaska Native organizations. More recent research by the National Marine Fisheries Service suggests that despite hunting controls beluga whales in Cook's Inlet remain severely depleted and at high risk of permanent extinction.

As governor, Palin allowed Chevron to triple the amount of toxic waste it dumped into Cook Inlet waters. While research by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that Cook Inlet belugas have lower levels of unrelated industrial contaminants than do unrelated beluga populations, Cook Inlet beluga whales have reduced from 1,300 in the 1970s and early 1980s to just 278 in 2005.

Trish Rolfe of the Sierra Club's Alaska branch has stated that Palin's policies have been a disaster for Alaska's environment.

Predator control

In 2007, Palin supported the controversial Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing Alaska state biologists to hunt wolves from helicopters as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose populations. The program, criticized by predator control opponents including Defenders of Wildlife, prompted California State Representative George Miller to introduce a federal bill (H.R. 3663) seeking to make the practice illegal. In March 2008, a federal judge in Alaska upheld the practice of hunting wolves from the air, though limited its extent. On August 26, 2008, Alaskans voted against ending the state's predator control program.

Foreign policy

Iraq

In an interview with Alaska Business Monthly "shortly after she took office" as governor, Palin favored an "exit plan" for the war in Iraq:

Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices.

Palin has tied the war to the quest for new energy supplies, saying, "We are a nation at war and in many the reasons for war are fights over energy sources, which is nonsensical when you consider that domestically we have the supplies ready to go." However, she also stipulated that a clear plan for Iraq should not include concerns with oil or energy dependence, saying, "I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy."

Israel

In a meeting on September 2, 2008 with leaders of the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC, Palin reportedly told them that she would "work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between U.S. and Israel."

References

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External links

• On the Issues - Sarah Palin's issue positions and quotes
• Sarah Palin news portal at Anchorage Daily News

• Political positions of United States presidential candidates, 2008
• Political positions of United States governors
• Sarah Palin