Attacks reveal insecurity of Palin critics

Another Friday, another self-serving attempt by the agenda-peddling Voice of the Times to besmirch gubernatorial hopeful Sarah Palin. In an editorial smugly headlined &#8220Candidate Palin, Alaskans are waiting, where's the dirt?”, Times writers two days ago seemed to think they spoke for all state residents in their second personal assault on the former Wasilla mayor.

For anyone familiar with the Times, this posture likely comes as no surprise. The operation is little more than a faux-journalism front for advancing the political interests of the Republican Party and the business interests of VECO and the oil industry.

While Palin is, without question, Republican through and through, she has run afoul of the hacks who pull the party strings for daring to suggest that its members conduct business transparently, honestly and in the best interest of the people of Alaska.

Unlike the Times, we never would presume to speak for all who call this state home. But it does seem likely to us that Alaskans are far more interested in this kind of fundamental good behavior than they are in hearing what dirt Palin, or any candidate, may have on another.

The basis for the Times' attack is Palin's use of a city computer to send a few e-mails related to her campaign for lieutenant governor in 2002, while she was mayor of Wasilla. In its Friday editorial, the Times disingenuously wondered how that &#8220was different than Republican Party chief Randy Ruedrich using Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission computers for party business.”

&#8220She just does not get it,” the editorial scolded.

But if anyone doesn't get it, it's the Times - and all those in the party who continue to genuflect before Ruedrich.

What he did was very different. His was not a matter of merely sending a few party-related e-mails from his state computer. In a shameful violation of the public trust, he willfully delivered classified information to a lobbyist working for a company that Ruedrich, as an AOGCC commissioner, was supposed to be regulating.

After his departure from the AOGCC, the sheer volume of e-mails discovered on Ruedrich's computer revealed a relationship between him and Evergreen Resources lobbyist Kyle Parker that bordered on collusion. Instead of acting as an independent overseer and protector of the public interest in the coal-bed methane controversy, Ruedrich cozied up to a company that attempted to legislatively undermine local control and the private property rights of Mat-Su residents.

It is worth noting, too, that six weeks or so after Parker received the classified document, he made a $1,000 contribution to the state Republican Party, according to Alaska Public Offices Commission disclosure reports. Perfectly legal, of course, but no less shady in its appearance.

Here's another big difference between the two cases, one that speaks directly to character: When confronted with the question of her inappropriate, but much smaller-scale, use of a city computer, Palin quickly fessed up and acknowledged it was wrong. Ruedrich resisted doing so until the bitter end, when his cronies in the administration - the governor, his chief of staff and attorney general - could no longer look the other way at his actions and ignore months of written and verbal complaints about him.

We are confident that voters who care and aren't irrationally blinded by party loyalty recognize these differences. For the rest, the clock is ticking. With a mere five weeks to go before the primary, those who refuse to acknowledge the very real difference between Palin and Ruedrich are left only with personal attacks - and the insecurity they must surely feel at the momentum of Palin's campaign, chugging steadily toward the electoral day of reckoning.