The Republican Party has a major problem – well it has a number of very serious problems – but top of that list, from a GOP perspective, is the Republican operatives have grown into a large, greedy, ethically challenged party.   Nothing will keep a God fearing Republican home on election day like evidence of corruption.  In 2008 the GOP is knee deep in the stuff.  Ted Stevens, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Vito Fosella ,Bob Ney…these are the names of but a few Republicans who violated their ethical responsibilities. The list goes on and on.



Remember in 2000 George Bush was elected (ok…appointed) President in part because of the public’s exhaustion with Bill Clinton’s ethical lapses.  In selecting Sarah Palin as the party’s vice-presidential nominee, McCain and company are shining a red hot light onto a state, a party, and a woman who are soaked in scandal, malfeasance and hypocrisy.Palin made her name fighting corrupt Republicans; she succeeded Frank Murkowski as governor — a man who planned his own retirement so that he could appoint his own daughter to his Senate seat.   She is a protégé of Ted Stevens who was just indicted for accepting a quarter million dollars in unreported gifts from an Alaskan contractor.  Palin herself has just been implicated in an abuse of power scandal.  Just this year she became embroiled in scandal when a bipartisan legislative council allocated $100,000 of taxpayer dollars to investigate claims that the governor holds a grudge against her former brother-in-law. Apparently Palin tried to use the power of the governor’s office to get the man fired from his job as a state trooper.



Palin is an unfortunate choice for the Republicans in a number of ways: she takes the issue of experience out of the GOP quiver; she punctuates McCain’s advanced age (he turned 72 today); she raises serious questons about McCain’s judgement in thinking a small town mayor and first term governor is ready to be one hearbeat away from the presidency. But most seriously, Palin opens up the campaign to the issue of ethics, and that is one conversation the Republicans should avoid. Raising this issue will only remind the Republican rank and file, along with the rest of the American people, of their party’s own excess.