Alaskans to media: Bring it on !

Alaskans to media: Bring it on
Republican delegates confident Palin has nothing to hide
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ST. PAUL, Minn. – Alaska delegates heading home after a giddy week here watching Sarah Palin enter the world stage as John McCain’s running mate will face a bevy of reporters probing every nook and cranny of their popular governor’s life and work, but their attitude is: Bring it on.

“Let ’em come,” said delegate Dave Lewis an operations analyst in Eagle River, Alaska. “I don’t think their digging is going to do anything more than present a picture of who Governor Palin is, what she has done and where she can take us.”

Palin, along with her husband, Todd, joined John and Cindy McCain on stage last night at the Republican National Convention after the Arizona senator formally accepted his nomination in a speech highlighting his career in the Navy, five years as a POW in Hanoi and 26 years in Congress.
McCain told the delegates last night he had “found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington.”
The delegates voted earlier in the evening to make official the convention’s nomination of Palin, whose own speech, Wednesday night, fired up the GOP faithful and drew widespread praise.

“It’s been surreal for us,” Lewis said, summing up the week. “When do you ever get a chance to come from a small state where the next vice president of the United States is your governor? It is just great.”

Lewis said Alaskans are “looking forward to the rest of the country and the world understanding what a fine governor we’ve had, what a fine person, and how much she can contribute not only to the ticket but to changing the things that Sen. McCain talked about tonight.”
Responding to the harsh media spotlight on Palin, Alaska delegate Mead Treadwell, a venture capitalist in Anchorage who has worked with the governor in numerous capacities, argued it’s possible to “find things about anybody if you tell half the story.”

‘”But when you see the full story, I don’t think they are going to lay a glove on her,” he said.

Among the issues raised is Palin’s firing of Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who claims he was let go because he refused to dismiss the governor’s brother-in-law, a state trooper going through a messy divorce with her sister. Palin denies any wrongdoing.
If Palin raised some questions about a trooper, it was to protect her family,” Treadwell said.
Other members of the state’s delegation contend it’s clear Monegan should have fired the trooper for gross misbehavior, such as driving drunk on the job and Tasing a young teen.
Treadwell sees the personal issues brought up against Palin – such as unwed daughter Bristol’s pregnancy – as off-limits, noting his mother was in Bristol’s shoes, and he wouldn’t be around if she had taken a different course.
Questions have been raised about whether the campaign properly vetted Palin, but McCain staffers contend they were aware of the matters raised by media and fierce critics of the new vice presidential candidate.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah noted in an interview with WND at the convention that Palin was vetted by former White House counsel Arthur Culvahouse.

“He’s one of the best attorneys in the country, one of the toughest guys. You don’t get by him with anything,” Hatch said.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that an in-depth interview meeting with Culvahouse didn’t take place until Aug. 27, one day before McCain decided on Palin. But campaign advisers said they had collected information about Palin before the meeting, including details of the firing of the safety commissioner, Monegan.

In his speech last night, McCain praised Palin as a leader with “executive experience and a real record of accomplishment.”

“She’s tackled tough problems like energy independence and corruption,” McCain said. “She’s balanced a budget, cut taxes and taken on the special interests.”

McCain said Palin “knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.”

“I’m very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country,” McCain said. “But I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming.”

While Palin’s “Washington outsider” image resonates as a campaign theme, for even many of her supporters it underscores the question of whether she is qualified to handle foreign policy issues.
Treadwell – who has worked with Palin on international relations and environmental and energy issues – said the governor is very bright and repeatedly has demonstrated she’s a quick study who does her homework before confronting any issue.

“I think it’s going to be great that we have a vice president who knows and understands people,” he said. “People say a “heartbeat from the presidency.” She’s got the heartbeat of America.”

Treadwell said he did not support Palin in her run for lieutenant governor, and “I’ve learned the hard way not to underestimate this woman.”

He has worked with her on numerous diplomatic endeavors, including one on energy two weeks ago with Arctic parliamentarians. Treadwell said he also has teamed with Palin on U.S.-Russia relations and talks with the president of Iceland on geothermal resources.
The governor conducts sessions such as these like any other meeting, according to Treadwell.

“She does her homework, she comes into the meeting, she says, ‘How can we make a deal, what’s in our common interest?’ And we move on.”

Treadwell said he was with Palin in another meeting to help elect an Alaska senator.

“I had read something that morning, I passed it across the table, and she said, ‘Yeah,'” acknowledging she had digested its contents,” Treadwell recalled. “It was one of the more obscure policy wonk things that you might get in the mail in Washington, and she’d been up to it.”
Treadwell called her “a student of politics and a student of what’s right.”

She has challenged oil companies when they don’t produce, but her approach is to help them become more competitive, he said.
Also, her attempt to lower health care costs, instinctively, was to say let’s be more competitive, he pointed out.
Treadwell, who serves on the board of a small airline in Alaska, said Palin’s challenge to the airline industry in the state is, “You guys can’t have a monopoly.”

“Now that’s a refreshing kind of Republican,” he said. “That’s a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. And I think you’re going to find Sarah Palin is a very, very good colleague.”

As the convention wound down last night amid popping balloons and confetti-strewn aisles, former House speaker Newt Gingrich summed up the mood. Speaking to the Fox News Channel’s Greta van Sustren, he said he’s been to seven conventions, and this one was the “happiest,” because of Palin.

“I think the very audacity of Palin has given everyone a sense that McCain is the real thing,” Gingrich said, “and we’re going to go out and fundamentally change Washington, and we’re going to do it with energy and courage.”

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Wild Thing’s comment………
I love it!
One of the radio talk shows requested for only people living in Alaska to call and they would put their calls through right away. One after the other called the host to tell him ( Bill Bennett) how he or she and their entire State loved Sarah. How they referred to her as…. Sarah. How their son played Hockey with her son. How they would see her at the grocery store and visit like any of us would, all the things that so many politicians soon forget when they are elected to office including Gov.’s of a State.
It was so refreshing to hear each called share how they knew her and some moment that they could share to let others have a glimpse into Sarah Palin.
This article touched me the same way. I love how the delegates feel the way they do like a real team. I love things like that.

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.