Via Anchorage Daily News:
But now the Palin legacy is being burnished, if not a little airbrushed, by a seemingly unlikely source: Democrats. The reason is oil.
Palin was elected governor in 2006 on a pledge to clean house after revelations of oil-industry corruption in the state Legislature, and in 2007 oversaw a sweeping overhaul of policy that included big new taxes on oil profits. But this year Gov. Sean Parnell -- Palin's lieutenant governor, and successor after her resignation in 2009 -- led a drive in the Republican-controlled Legislature to repeal the Palin tax package, arguing that it discouraged new exploration. That is a big issue in Alaska, where oil taxes pay for 90 percent of the state's general fund budget.
But that was not the end of it. Opponents of the new law gathered enough signatures this spring and summer to put the issue on the statewide ballot next year. They want voters to repeal Parnell's new tax plan and replace it with Palin's old one.
And that has stirred up a very strange political cocktail: Democrats leading the repeal effort have every incentive to make the Palin years under her oil taxes look good, while Republicans and many business leaders, in supporting the new system, are pulling in the opposite direction. The Palin era, they say, was a glass half empty at best.
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