How damaging will the Sarah Palin emails be to conservative America?
The Sarah Palin documents that were released to major news corporations on Friday tell story of an Alaskan governor who craved attention from the national and international media. The attention seeking former Alaskan governor quit half way through her four year term because of a drive to sell books and appear on American chat shows rather than serve the people of Alaska who voted for her. The emails themselves will do severe damage to the American right but will they really tarnish Palin herself? Palin is not a credible candidate for the Republican Party and over the past three years she has shown herself up time and time again.
The most damaging aspects of the email's will be the revelation that the former Alaskan governor wanted to strike a deal with ex BP boss Tony Haywood to install a 1,700 mile oil pipeline across North America - a year after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. They reveal that Palin instructed her office to ensure that Hayward had all her private and official phone numbers so the call could proceed after his office asked for it to be rearranged. The biggest oil spill in American history sparked fury across the country and Tony Haywood was the convenient scapegoat for an American love of oil. For Palin to even be in contact with the ex-boss of BP only a year after the oil spill will infuriate American voters.
Far worse for the Republican Party will be the fact that Sarah Palin drove anti-British sentiment after the oil spill. In May 2010, Palin commented: "learn from Alaska's lesson with foreign oil companies." She added: "Don't naively trust - verify." In public Palin was saying the right things, making sure that the American voters knew she was standing up for them. In private she was trying arrange one of the largest pipeline contracts in North America. Surely her credibility as a future President of the United States has been shot.
Palin's links with BP do not end at the deal she tried to broker with BP a year after the biggest oil spill in American history. Her husband, Todd Palin, worked for BP for over 18 years and some sections of the US media are suggesting a conflict of interest. It would not be unkind to suggest that whatever credibility the former Alaskan governor had before the emails were released has all but disintegrated. Palin's desire to be known across America has shown that both her credibility and integrity need to be questioned.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill still haunts America and the fury is still being vented at BP. The American conservatives can't afford to be seen as the party that have let BP off the hook just a year after the disaster. In the 2009 American Presidential election, Louisiana was on the list of swing states with 9 Electoral votes. If The Republican Party are seen to be soft on the disaster and back big corporations whatever disasters they cause the party will find itself unelectable American conservatives may be angered over the way the media has exposed Palin but they must distance themselves from her error prone judgements.
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