http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080829/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_vulnerabilities
AP. Of course, the claim that she or her staff tried to have her ex brother in law fired. But look at these reasons that she is a poor pick. hilarious.
She also is under fire from environmentalists for opposing the Bush administration's decision in May to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act because global warming is melting the polar ice cap. Palin said the decision could damage the state's and nation's economy.
Palin's rapid ascent in politics followed her appointment in 2003 by then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to Alaska's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. From that post, she exposed ethical violations by the state GOP chairman, also a fellow commissioner, who got too close to the oil companies, and later exposed a similar problem involving the state attorney general.
She supports opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling. But over opposition from oil companies, she pushed through the Alaska Legislature new taxes on the profits from oil pumped on Alaska's North Slope, arguing that an earlier tax proposal by her predecessor, Murkowski, was too lenient to the industry.
With oil prices soaring, Alaska collected an estimated $6 billion from the new taxes last fiscal year. With the state treasury bulging, she won legislative approval for a special $1,200 payment to every Alaskan to help pay for high energy prices.
She supports a TransCanada Corp pipeline opposed by Exxon Mobil Corp ConocoPhillips and BP PLC, the major gas lease holders on the North Slope. They have proposed a separate pipeline venture.
Palin's approval ratings have ranged from 79 to 86 percent, says Mark Hellenthal, a Republican pollster in Alaska.
Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for Alaska's second-largest newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, called McCain's choice of Palin reckless and questioned her credentials.
"Sarah Palin's chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski," Cole said of her enormously unpopular predecessor, who lost favor with Alaskans in part because of unpopular budget cuts. "She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla."
Former state Rep. Ray Metcalfe, a Republican turned Democrat who was an early whistleblower in an FBI investigation that unearthed waves of corruption in Alaska politics, said his party will have a tough time finding ways to criticize Palin.
Palin, in a move that shook up Alaska's Republican party, took on the state's long-term congressional delegation,
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, calling on them to explain why they're the target of federal corruption investigations.
She has a reputation as a reformer.