Iris Robinson and Sarah Palin both used their ostentatious religious belief to win votes. Palin belongs to the Wasilla Assembly of God, an organisation which seems to distinguish itself from most other religious
groups by being deeply interested in shoes. Its website features the 2009 Shoe Giveaway, the 2008 Shoe Outreach and the 2007 Shoe Outreach. “Shoe” in this context is not some obscure theological term but the things you wear on your feet.
Palin’s first significant elected office was mayor of Wasilla though “significant” might be stretching it a bit. She defeated the incumbent by 651 votes to 440 on a platform tackling those staples of local government everywhere – gun control and abortion. Her supporters put it around that Mayor Stein who was not in Palin’s words “a born-here, raised-here, gonna be buried here kinda guy” was both Jewish and living in sin. He’s neither.
Palin went on a deregulatory binge in office. She sacked the town planner, police chief, museum director and librarian. Then she abolished business and personal property taxes. She changed the planning regulations to allow firms like KFC, Wal Mart, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Subway and McDonald’s to refashion Wasilla in their own image. She says “Basically we’d gotten government out of the way.” They replaced it with an eyesore of a town.
In recent months Palin has become a Rottweiler gnawing at Obama’s fiscal stimulus policy using Twitter as her preferred medium. “”Prez pls pay down massive obscene US debt &/or give “stimulus” $ back to Americans” is her entire economic message. The Tea Party movement seems to be adopting her as its supreme leader and she seems to be using their base to push the Republican Party even further to the right.
Robinson is just as right wing as Palin but is constrained by a different political situation. You can’t imagine them having a row about abortion or gay rights and it’s a reasonable bet that Robinson would have been happy for every able bodied loyalist to have the right to bear arms. What’s quite intriguing about the two of them is their perception that by facilitating speculative property development they are in some way doing God’s work even if Alaska offers slightly more lucrative opportunities than Castlereagh. They both appeal to the same sort of churchgoing electorate which has an unquestioning sense that its own small town morality is the only barrier against the evils of sin and social liberalism. They have both very cleverly ridden this wave of bigotry and intolerance to make a lot of money for themselves by wrapping it up in a sanctimonious, judgemental, anti-intellectual religiosity.
One final observation on the Robinson business. In most jobs if the person in charge has to go off for a few weeks it’s the deputy who fills the post. So with Peter Robinson taking a sabbatical it should have been Deputy First Minister Mc Guinness getting the fancier office for a few week. Instead its the DUP’s Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster. That must be the parity of esteem the Provies keep talking about.
Liam redux 
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