A Few Things You'd Have to Believe to Believe What McCain Staffers Say About Sarah Palin

A Few Things You'd Have to Believe to Believe What McCain Staffers Say About Sarah Palin by Mary Katharine Ham on November 6, 2008

Related:
Sarah Palin on "Small and Bitter" McCain Aides Trashing Her The Blog home page Obama's White Evangelical Outreaching

Let's add some context to the Carl Cameron and Newsweek airing of rumors from anonymous McCain/Palin staffers. The most controversial claims, all of which come without names attached because the purveyors are apparently determined to stick around to undermine future campaigns and candidates, are that Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent as opposed to a country, and that she didn't know who the members of NAFTA were.

Let's start with NAFTA. If folks want to believe Gov. Sarah Palin did not know even the most basic facts about NAFTA, they have to believe a couple other improbable things.

Before she became governor, Palin's husband Todd's commercial fishing business on Bristol Bay accounted a decent percentage of the family's income. The couple reported about $46,000 from the business last year on a license Todd purchased from his grandfather in the 1970s. He has been a lifelong commercial fisherman and she has often been his partner both in the business and literally on the boat.

Surely while the two were working in the commercial salmon fishing industry in post-NAFTA Alaska, they would not have missed the effect farmed-salmon imports from Canada had on the industry, causing the number of fisherman, the size of the harvest, and the value of permits to go down significantly in Alaska. According to a 2003 AP article:

Read the rest of Mary Katherine Ham’s blog post here: A Few Things You'd Have to Believe to Believe What McCain Staffers Say About Sarah Palin

20081106 M K Ham In order to believe what McCain Staffers Say About Palin