A lot of people have praised Sarah Palin for “standing up to colleagues in the Republican Party over matters of principle.” Let’s examine this. Remember, reputations can be wrong; McCain has a reputation for being a “maverick.” Today, that reputation is completely false; he has turned into a poster boy for the hard right wing, and bucks the party on very little, if anything. Even in 2000, when he was strongest in this area, his maverick-ness was relatively tepid, extending to compromises on only a few issues; he still remained strongly conservative, and mostly made a show of being centrist.

So let’s ask the same question of Sarah Palin. Why does she have a reputation for standing up to her party?

There are two major examples given which, upon even a cursory examination, prove to be false. One is when she “opposed” the “bridge to nowhere,” showing she doesn’t approve of pork, even for her own party. Except for the fact that she opposed it only after it was dead in the water; before then, she actually supported the project, stating that porkbarrel money was too slow in coming to Alaska. Hardly bucking the party.

The other example was the benefits for same-sex couples; she vetoed a ban on such benefits. So, hey, she’s pro-gay! Whaddaya know? Except… she only vetoed the bill when it was made clear to her that the courts had ruled that such a ban was unconstitutional, and was guaranteed to be overturned. Instead of bucking her party, she actually went so far as to suggest amending the state constitution to make the ban legal, and then she’d sign it. So again, she doesn’t really buck the party line… but only makes a show of it when the results won’t be affected by her decision.

But what about her rabid environmentalism? Yes, she does back oil, coal, and the standard conservative energy policy–but hey, she’s an environmentalist! OK, fine: how is she an environmentalist? What measures does she support–actual protection, or fake protection like the Bush administration does? After all, this is a person who thinks global warming is not man-made, opposes protections on endangered species such as the polar bear and the Beluga Whale because their protection might interfere with oil drilling, favors major mining operations in the midst of a salmon fishery, and supports drilling in ANWR. She is for research into renewable energy sources, but that hardly counts because everyone voices support for that, and Palin has said she doesn’t see these as being useful any time soon–in other words, she supports them as a someday-maybe kind of thing. Meanwhile, she heavily supports mining and drilling prospects which are even further off in the future in terms of being viable, and harm the environment much more.

So what are the ground-breaking environmental issues she supports?

Umm… I can’t find any. The only thing I found was that “Palin also chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multi-state panel ‘that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment.’” That’s it. So while Palin may have some pro-environmental stances, none have shown up in her actual policies and decisions. In fact, every time there is a conflict between environment and drilling/mining/resource-extraction, the environment loses with Palin. As far as I can tell, Palin’s “environmentalism” is purely for show, and has no substance.

As for “bucking her party”? Hardly.

Now, there is the matter of windfall oil profit taxes; she did approve of them in Alaska, and that does buck the party trend. But this seems to be less because of her maverick ways and more due to the fact that she’s a big spender. In fact, she’s (1) a big spender, (2) a tax-hiker, and (3) a deficit-raiser. When mayor of Wasilla, she mismanaged a sports complex project that ended up paying way too much for the land it was on, and otherwise massively increased city spending–so much so, that when she left office, every citizen of Wasilla was $3000 more in debt than they were when she came in. Similarly, as governor of Alaska, she signed into law the biggest state budget ever.

So, to help pay for the bigger budget she wanted, she went for what is arguably the easiest tax hike imaginable: tax oil companies, but only when they make huge profits.

I’ll give credit for that much, but let’s get real here: as far as being a “maverick” goes, it’s pretty tame, and taken together with the spending and the deficit generation, not the most positive quality you’d want in an executive.

In short, while Palin will cross her party, it is only in one place–and that is to raise taxes on huge profits in order to pay for ballooning expenditures. On every other issue, every other principle, she’s a hard-line conservative who toes the party line, and then some. At best, she’s an opportunistic, for-show-only maverick, only when it doesn’t matter much if at all.

I wouldn’t call that being an actual “maverick.” Not by a long shot.