Sarah Talks To Her Base

There is much befuddlement and some amusement over Governor Sarah Palin’s response to the bipartisan report that she had violated state ethics laws in her (and Todd’s) harassment of William Monagan and others to pressure them into firing Palin’s brother-in-law.

Here’s what the report says:

Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.

That’s a violation of the Alaska State law Sec. 39.52.110:

(a) The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust. (more)… and …

Sec. 39.52.120. Misuse of official position. (b) A public officer may not (3) use state time, property, equipment, or other facilities to benefit personal or financial interests; (4) take or withhold official action in order to affect a matter in which the public officer has a personal or financial interest; (5) attempt to benefit a personal or financial interest through coercion of a subordinate or require another public officer to perform services for the private benefit of the public officer at any time…

Here’s what the report concluded:

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 2952.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

Pretty straightforward, though some have tried to muddy the waters by equating a “personal” interest with a financial one, and saying thereby that absent financial interest, no law was broken.

Here’s what Governor Palin said in response:

“I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing…any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.”

I’m grateful to the Aussie’s, who in the 1990’s coined the expression “dog-whistle politics”. That’s what Palin is doing – yes, objective observers can see that she is plainly contradicting the findings of the report, but she is speaking to a special group of people – those who support her without question or reservation, who think that Katie Couric sandbagged her by asking her if she read things. They will never read the report, and their only information on that report will be what Governor Palin says.

They heard her. That’s all that’s going on. Sarah’s talking to the Christians.