This Poisonous Mushroom Was Cultivated

Nina Burleigh, HuffPo: Who is the Handler?

...Sarah Palin's entry into politics and subsequent rise has all the hallmarks of having been engineered, coached and groomed by bigger outside forces with a bigger plan.

Her first election to mayor in 1996 was based on "wedge Issues" - abortion, gun control, and proof of hard-core religiosity - issues that had never been discussed before in the town of 7,000, where politicians had run on where they stood on bingo revenue and fixing muddy roads.

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There was a time when America's small town governments were about local civics and its churches really were mainly about spirituality. That quaint era vanished, within living memory, with the rise of the "Christian right" which literally infected mainstream American Christianity with hateful brochures about gays, guns, and abortion.

The movement didn't emerge from within those little country churches, either. It was brought to them by a sophisticated set of well-funded groups and foundations, many with ties to the Republican Party and its copious moneybags. These organizations are based a long ways from Wasilla, in places like Washington, D.C., Arlington, Norfolk -- the state of Virginia, in fact, seems to have spawned or hosted most of them.

But they have a long reach and they are run by cautious, clever, watchful men.
I learned never to underestimate these right wing Svengalis involvement in small things....