I’m busy with too many things to blog properly, but this is a gimme. Allah quotes Politico:

Savvy readers [of her biography] might find cause for concern in Palin’s burning ambition, her ruthlessness or her complete lack of loyalty to political patrons. …

… Palin was encouraged to run for a City Council seat in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1992 by council member Nick Carney and was warmly welcomed into office by then-Mayor John Stein. Within months of taking office, she had voted against a pay hike for Stein and against a mandatory garbage collection ordinance that would have greatly enriched Carney. Four years later, Palin unseated Stein…

The scandals Palin helped prod along [while an appointee of Gov. Frank Murkowski’s administration] badly damaged the Murkowski administration. She ran against the governor in the 2006 GOP primary, easily finishing him off.

Palin had her reasons but the pattern is clear. She is invited in by well-established pols, doesn’t get her way and ends up running against the “good old boys” and defeating them handily.

Was it possible that she thought the mayor’s salary was high enough by objective standards and that Wasilla didn’t need the garbage collection ordinance? Was it an understood thing that “encouragement to run” and a “warm welcome” cost her vote on their pet issues? That is not loyalty; that is corruption. Looks to me like an unwillingness to pay back good manners with political influence might be one of the reasons McCain picked her. Will he have to watch his back around her? Looks to me like no, as long as he watches his step around voters. Which is fine by me. If she defects and challenges in 2012, it is the voters who will decide whether she had good reasons to do so.