Political positions of Sarah Palin

According to Gene Straatmeyer, a local Presbyterian minister, Palin told him during a city council hearing, "'I go to Assembly of God Church and I am a Sunday school teacher there, and I see no relationship between my Christian faith and what hours the bars close.'"

"[2] On June 10, 2010, Palin expressed dismay on her Twitter account that the floodlights of the Empire State Building would not be changed blue and white in honor of Mother Teresa's 100th birthday.

"[9] Palin was referring to the Empire State Building's September 9, 2009, lighting scheme, when it was bathed in red and yellow to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

[10] Palin opposed the construction of Park51, a proposed 13-story Islamic cultural center with mosque, planned to be built in New York City on Park Place between West Broadway and Church Street, two blocks away from Ground Zero.

On March 2, 2011, she tweeted: "Common sense & decency absent as wacko 'church' allowed hate msgs spewed@ soldiers' funerals, but we can't invoke God's name in public square"[12] Palin clarified her tweet the next day: "Obviously my comment meant that when we're told we can't say 'God bless you' in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game, but these wackos can invoke God's name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency.

"[26] Palin also said that she hoped "to reach out and work with those who are on the other side of this issue, because I know that we can all agree on the need for and the desire for fewer abortions in America and greater support for adoption, for other alternatives that women can and should be empowered to embrace, to allow that culture of life.

"[26] Gibson noted that Republican presidential nominee John McCain allows exceptions for rape or incest, and asked, "Do you believe in it only in the case where the life of the mother is in danger?"

[43][44] In a July 31, 2012, interview with Greta Van Susteren, Palin was asked about states' rights as they pertained to same-sex marriage, to which Palin responded, "I believe that states have that constitutional right to make decisions about a variety of issues, but when it comes to some very fundamental, very cornerstone aspects of our society, of our culture, I personally would love to see a national dialogue about what will America continue to define as marriage.

"[46] While interviewing candidates to fill judge vacancies in Alaska state courts, Palin asked prospective appointees questions about work history, background, and basic judicial philosophy.

"[58] On July 9, 2010, episode of The O'Reilly Factor, Palin again indicated support for a path to citizenship but clarified that illegal aliens should not be "rewarded for bad behavior": "We won't complicate it any more.

Palin emphasized that more border enforcement should come first and said that current attempts at reform should "learn from history," concerning the amnesty granted by Ronald Reagan, which she believed was "botched.

"[59] On June 1, 2011, Palin said her opposition to the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide conditional permanent residency to certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from U.S. high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. legally or illegally as minors and have been in the country continuously for at least five years before the bill's enactment: "The immigrants in the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow the rules to become U.S. citizens.

"[69] Shortly after becoming governor, Palin canceled a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18 km) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine[70] and sold the state's Westwind II jet, which had been purchased by the Frank Murkowski administration against the wishes of the legislature.

According to a review by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group, Wasilla (a town of 6,700 residents) benefited from $26.9 million in earmarks in Palin's final four years in office.

[84] In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Palin argued in favor of a free-market approach to health care including deregulation, tort reform and "providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage.

"[87] She coined the term when she charged that proposed legislation would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would carry out triage, i.e. decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents, or children with Down syndrome—were "worthy of medical care".

[88] Palin's claim has been referred to as the "death panel myth",[87] as nothing in any proposed legislation would have led to individuals being judged to see if they were worthy of health care.

She also mentioned death panels in a statement she made to the New York State Senate Aging Committee"[95] and in a Wall Street Journal editorial,[85] both dated September 8, 2009.

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care.

[106] In her acceptance speech at the GOP in September 2008, Palin said: "I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history," "And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollars natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence."

As governor, Palin strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, and advocates exposing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling,[110] controverting McCain's position.

[111] In an interview with Time in 2008, Palin argued that energy independence through ANWR drilling was essential to reducing American dependence on hostile foreign regimes.

"[118] In a December 2009 editorial, she wrote, "Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits – not pursuing a political agenda.

[136] Recent research states that hunting controls have halted the decline of beluga whales in Cook's Inlet but that the population remains severely depleted and at high risk of extinction.

[141] As Governor of Alaska, Palin criticized proposed Obama administration cuts to missile defense programs, in response to North Korea's April 5, 2009 rocket test.

[146] During an interview on February 7, 2010, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Palin if she supported the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," the United States military policy which restricts efforts to discover or reveal closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members or applicants, while barring those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service.

"[152] In her June 2013 address to the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference, Palin declared her opposition to American involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war: "Militarily, where is our Commander-in-Chief?

I say, until we know what we're doing, until we have a Commander-in-Chief who knows what he's doing, well, Chief, in these radical Islamic countries who aren't even respecting basic human rights, where both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line, 'Allah Akbar,' I say, until we have someone who knows what they're doing, I say, let Allah sort it out!

A two-state solution, building our embassy, also, in Jerusalem, those things that we look forward to being able to accomplish, with this peace-seeking nation, and they have a track record of being able to forge these peace agreements."

"[163] On May 23, 2011, Palin reiterated her opposition to President Obama's statement that an independent Palestine is based on the borders of 1967, before the Yom Kippur War in which Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.