Sean Parnell - THE CURRENT TARGET

Sean Parnell is as simple a character as Governor Sarah Palin is complex. Watching him at the Hispanic Affairs Council of Anchorage candidate forum back in late May was interesting. I didn't learn much about his positions on the important issues before the council, and when he evaded a question from a moderator, he was treated with derisive feedback, just short of boos, from the audience.

This wasn't all that surprising. Nor was the discovery that Parnell's recipe to fix our broken health care paradigm is quite similar to Berkowitz's - tweak the dang thing a bit and it will all be OK for everyone.

(Ethan's campaign site is down Sunday morning, so you'll have to find his health care link yourself)

Here's the comparison on health care:

Berkowitz:

Expanding medical record-keeping technology to reduce administrative costs and improve safety through information sharing

Promote preventative care and healthy living choices

Expanding the federal SCHIP program to cover a wider range of children

Allow for small business insurance pooling.

Parnell:

Prevention is the best way to avoid continually escalating health care costs.

Next, early recognition and effective treatment are necessary to limit disease’s impact on the individual and on the community at large.

States need local flexibility.

Both of those primary race candidates - in separate races - are very health care industry-friendly in their approaches to the problem, and a scanning of both candidates' contributors will reinforce that fact.

Back to Parnell as target, for the time being, though. Friday's Wall Street Journal editorial about the Young-Parnell primary contest, by Club for Growth president Pat Toomey, may have been spot-on about Young, but regarding Parnell, it was total, unadulterated bullshit. In the piece, Toomey writes, "Mr. Parnell is a solid conservative who led the fight for lower taxes and spending in the state legislature, and joined Gov. Sarah Palin in pushing for reform in the state."

In addition to the WSJ editorial, the CFG issued a press release, expanding upon Parnell's tax-cutting history, with, "Mr. Parnell is a solid conservative who led the fight for lower taxes and spending in the state legislature, and joined Gov. Sarah Palin in pushing for reform in the state."

The Anchorage Daily News political blog covered the Parnell endorsement. In the comments, some of Young's supporters tore Toomey's piece to shreds. Others merely pointed out the obvious, as did ubiquitous commenter, Stag's Leap, with "Parnell supported Palin's proposal to raise taxes on Industry by BILLIONS. Parnell said nothing to help support either pro-life bill in the last session. And under the Palin/Parnell regime, the state's operating budget grew by 23%.

"That is not conservative. Then throw in the fact that Parnell has said nothing -you got something more liberal than anything. He for darn sure ain't no conservative in any sense of the word."

I received some offers since the word got out last month that I regard Parnell as the main target, for guest posts, and have gotten links to some great Parnell info.

The embrace of Parnell by this nest of vipers and enemies of political transparency is good news to the whackos at the blog, RedState. How the reliance of his campaign upon groups that would traditionally smite a rebellious GOP character like Sarah Palin develops, will be interesting to watch. The ironies will ring in their dissonance.

Speaking of ironies, I find it interesting that the Wall Street Journal and Club for Growth are endorsing the idea that Don Young's Coconut Road earmark was a slimy deal, while the Anchorage Daily News has yet to state in their print editions that the first person in public life to condemn Young's earmark was Berkowitz's opponent in the Democratic Party primary, Diane Benson.

Over nine months ago.

Update - Monday 1:00 p.m. PDT: The graphic I put up yesterday, now removed, linking a Sean Parnell to various GOP groups, is - according to a couple of sources now - not about our Sean Parnell, but about another one who figures prominently in GOP politics. I can't find any information on the other guy, doing a quick Google search, though.