In two years she negotiated a natural gas pipeline that was stalled for 30 years. Got that? 30 years and no one could get that pipeline deal down. She did it. In her own words:
For the next three decades, there had been talk of building another pipeline to transport cleaner, greener natural gas down to the Lower 48. But that’s all it ever amounted to — talk. And one of the main obstacles was big oil itself — ExxonMobil and other companies.
They should have been competing to invest in a new means of delivering their product to market. Instead, they wanted a higher price than fair competition would yield. They were holding out for more billions of dollars — in public money. No one in good conscience could pay them what they wanted to build that pipeline. And that’s how we found things when I became governor: No progress, no pipeline, no gas revenue for Alaska, no added energy security for America.
So we introduced the big oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept some of them had forgotten — free-market competition. They had a monopoly on power and resources, and we broke it.
The result is, finally, progress on the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history — a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. When the last section is laid and its valves are opened, that pipeline will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. That pipeline will be a lifeline — freeing us from debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.
Don’t believe her? Try this article from Byron York from National Review.
You know what I love about that statement by Palin? It is libertarian free market principles at their finest! The big oil empire in Alaska was a textbook case of "corporatism" -- the collusion of big government with big business. A true free market system is not corporatism. In fact corporatism was first introduced by fascist regimes. When she took on the big oil companies she was not being "anti-business" or "anti-development", she was being anti-corporatism. She was fighting the oil empire (that's how they refer to the big three oil companies in Alaska) that had bypassed free market principles by buying off government.
Her stance in fighting these oil empires represents to me a strong and new voice for true free market principles.
Here's another one for your collection in case you haven't seen it -- from Investors Business Daily -- an editorial on the Pelosi gang and her environmentalist allies shifting blame for not drilling Alaska's offshore reserves to the oil companies while her buddies lock up the issue in the courts on environmental grounds. This is one Sarah is fighting right now:
In a July interview with IBD in which we asked better questions than Katie Couric, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, before she was picked as John McCain's running mate, said: "There are even bigger sources of crude than ANWR . . . such as offshore areas like the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea."
Palin in May challenged the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species; the listing was another move designed to block drilling in these areas. She argued that polar bears were and are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over the last 30 years. Since 1960, when the Alaska oil hunt began, only two oil-related bear fatalities have been documented, according to the federal Mineral Management Service.
The problem, Palin said, was "we frequently find ourselves at the mercy of those who think that we must be protected from ourselves. Shell is up here wanting to drill offshore, but they've been fighting various environmental groups through the 9th Circuit Court and are running into very fierce push-back."
The pipeline is very important, but it is only one issue. She had nothing much to say on health care or the bailout or most of the other issues that a governor has to deal with.