Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists

The buffoonish nature of Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy has mostly been a disaster for the McCain-Palin campaign, but it is has delivered at least one benefit: her foibles have helped obscure the true nature of her right-wing extremism.

But now, Sarah Palin's self-destructive behavior is threatening to expose even that. In an interview broadcast yesterday on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams asked Palin whether she felt abortion clinic bombers were terrorists.

Amazingly, she said that she didn't know. MSNBC reports (emphasis added):

Palin resisted the suggestion that if Ayers was a "domestic terrorist"  -- a standard line in her campaign addresses -- then so were conservative religious activists who bombed abortion clinics.

"I don't know if you're going to use the word 'terrorist' there," she said.

Palin's answer is perhaps the single most incredible thing I've heard from any candidate during this entire general election campaign, and I don't make that statement lightly.

What makes it so incredible is that Sarah Palin was responding to one of the easiest questions that has been posed during this entire campaign. Her answer should have been simple: of course they are terrorists.

Instead, Palin balked, saying that while bombings were unacceptable, she didn't know if they were acts of terrorism. As Meteor Blades put it, Palin's answer was an obvious wink and a nod to right wing extremists, with whom she shares radical views, including opposition to reproductive freedom even in cases of rape or incest and advovacy of protests designed to disrupt access to abortion clinics.

This was not a question to which "I don't know" was an acceptable answer. There is no excuse for it, and it puts Sarah Palin well on the margins of this nation's political spectrum.

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