'Palin believes she is on a mission from God'

"Sarah Palin's road from mayor of a small Alaskan town to John McCain's running mate is littered with casualties. But then she is, she believes, on a mission from God." George Bush with lipstick? Guardian article here.

The shift in the party's focus from mammon to God is illustrated perfectly in Palin's successful campaign to become mayor in 1996. All previous elections had revolved around such existential questions as how to improve the pavements and get litter off the streets. She ignored all that, campaigning instead against abortion and gun control and casting aspersions on her (Republican) opponent about his infrequent attendance of church.

Victoria Naegele was editor of the local paper, The Frontiersman, at the time and can recall the shock of the Palin revolution. "I remember thinking 'Wow! Are religious issues really germane to the job of being mayor of a town of just 5,000 people?'"

Naegele remembers vividly too a second shockwave that came swiftly after Palin's election. Instead of easing her way into the role, she went in with guns blazing, demanding that six of the department heads of the council - none of them political appointments, several with many years' service - submit their resignations. When Naegele protested through the editorial columns of the paper at what she saw as the new mayor's heavy-handed style, she felt the heat. "It was a difficult time. I was lambasted as a liberal, when in fact I am a Christian conservative Republican, just like Sarah Palin."

Then, in an incident that is fast turning into the stuff of political legend, Palin was revealed earlier this week to have attempted to censor Wasilla's library. The idea is almost laughable when you see the library itself. Its small collection of books includes a prominent section on hunting and fishing, and no visible copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Yet in 1996, after parents complained about a book their child had taken home, Palin took umbrage. Frustratingly, no one can remember the volume concerned. What we do know is that Palin turned on the then librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, asking her in a council meeting what she would do if she were told by the mayor to remove certain books from the collection.

Local resident Anne Kilkenny was in the public gallery and heard the librarian's reaction: "She sucked in her breath, and replied that the books in the library were all acquired in accordance with professional criteria and she would resist completely."

Palin has since claimed her question was purely rhetorical. That is not how Naegele and Kilkenny perceived it at the time. A few weeks later, Palin sent Emmons a letter terminating her employment. "People in the town rose up in anger," Kilkenny recalls. "The library is an important institution in our city, as there's not a lot else to do here in the winter but sit by the fire with a good book. There was real public pressure, and Sarah was forced to rescind the letter."

Emmons survived. Others were less fortunate. . . .

Again, she was utterly in tune with the trajectory of her party. By the end of the 1990s the Republican leadership had adopted a modus operandi that also combined religious zealotry with managerial ruthlessness. Yet this development was not without its detractors within the party. One of the loudest critics was the very man who has put Palin on the national stage: John McCain. Paradoxically, it was partly his disdain for the grip that TV preachers came to hold over the Republicans that earned him a reputation as a maverick. . . .

Most poignantly, she will not countenance sex education for teenagers, preferring instead to preach that abstinence is the only complete protection against pregnancy or venereal disease. It would be a cheap shot to suggest that this week's bombshell revelation that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is herself pregnant was Palin's comeuppance.

But it would not be unfair to point out that Alaska has the highest per capita incidence of chlamydia in the country, and that the rate of teenage pregnancies across the US, including within her state, has just risen for the first time in 14 years - a trend many blame on George Bush's preferment of abstinence-only education. "It's frustrating we aren't doing more to inform our children," said Brittany Goodnight of the Alaska branch of Planned Parenthood.

If the religious flame still burns bright, so too does the ruthless determination. . . .

The casualties scattered along Palin's path continue to mount. Lyda Green, a neighbour of Palin's in Wasilla, has just become the latest. She is stepping down as a state senator after 14 years.

Green is the leader of the Republicans in the Alaskan senate and an old-style fiscal conservative. She voted against several of the governor's most important initiatives over the past two years, including a move to increase taxes on the big oil and gas companies. Green was surprised by the reprisals that followed. "I found early on that if you disagreed with her it was not taken as a disagreement with policy, but a personal disagreement."

First came the embarrassment of a radio interview between Palin and a local rightwing shock-jock in which the interviewer called Green a bitch and a cancer within the party. Palin's response on air? She laughed.

"She knew I'm a cancer survivor - she sent me flowers," Green says. "That was a very lacklustre moment."

Then Palin arranged for a friend to stand this summer against Green in the Republican party's selection process for her own senate seat. Green decided to stand down rather than go through a primary battle she was sure would be ugly. "There came a point when I thought it was no longer worth it," says Green. "I didn't need, in a community as small as this, to stand in the face of this very popular governor." Then she adds: "But it's not a way to run a government."

That's a pertinent observation, I suggest, in the light of the next destination Sarah Palin hopes to reach in her improbable journey. "It is pertinent," Green replies. . . .