Who could have guessed?

Palin a John Bircher?

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2008/09/early-signs-of.html
http://firedoglake.com/2008/09/20/sarah-palins-bircher-mag-what-was-in-it/

Missed this when it came out in September, nor have I seen reference to it until today's link in TPM and eschaton.

Not quite the smoking gun, but as close to evidence that she was a John Birch sympathizer as one's likely to get.. nor an unreasonable construction of the photo.

Who could have imagined a Bircher would get this close to the Oval Office? I grew up in a Southren all-Republican all-the-time family. My mother campaigned for Goldwater.. but sheesh, we regarded the Birchers as raving lunatics.

I thought the John Birch Society had shriveled up and blown away with the mainstreaming of Birch anti-intellectual know-nothing nativism into the GOP.

The connection with Kristol, then, is intriguing, since AFAIK the Birchers weren't exactly neocons or Big Bidness types. But there's no reason to guess that Kristol would have been aware either of the AIP connection or the Birch connection.

h/t atrios, TPM