Sarah Palin and gay marriage: Hypocrisy at its worst

I find few things more disgusting that political hypocrisy. I'd sooner vote for an honest politician whose views were diametrically opposed to mine, than to vote for a hypocrite who agrees with me. Sarah Palin doesn't fit either case – she's a hypocrite whose views are diametrically opposed to mine.

What has raised my ire today? Palin thinks we need a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This violates everything the Republican Party stands for.

The Republican Party has a long and consistent history of advocating small government, of keeping government out of our lives, of remembering that we are a federation of semi-sovereign states, each of which gets to largely control its own internal affairs.

Evangelicals like Sarah Palin go on and on about controlling government, keeping states rights alive, keeping government out of our lives, and keeping both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution. The Federal Government is only supposed to deal with national and international issues. Everything else is left to the states.

Yet, when it comes to injecting Christian morals into our lives, Sarah Palin is all too fast to abandon these principles. Instead of letting each state consider this issue, Palin wants to abandon her Republican principles (or perhaps she never had any principles to start with), and pass a Constitutional amendment that would make her conservative Evangelical views the law of the land.

Senator McCain, by contrast, is an honest Republican. Although I strongly disagree with his position on gay marriage (he's against it), I admire his principles: He believes this is a state issue, not a federal issue. Unlike Palin, he won't abandon his long-held principles about the role of the federal government, just to achieve some short-term goal.

And isn't it ironic that Palin, and not John McCain, is the one drawing everyone's attention, including mine. You don't see Senator Biden out there stealing all the attention from Senator Obama. I think that's a sad indication that McCain's campaign is in trouble.