So now that the increasingly desperate Republicans have decided that Bill Ayers is an Evil Terrorist, let’s look at the people that Sarah Palin pals around with:

Take it away, Greg Sargent!

As you already know, the group is the Alaska Independence Party, which sees as its ultimate goal seceding from the union. Todd [Palin, Sarah's husband] was a member, with a brief exception, from 1995 until 2002, according to the Division of Elections in Alaska.

And though Sarah Palin herself was apparently not a member of this group, there’s no doubt that she repeatedly courted this secessionist organization over the years. In 1994, Palin attended the group’s annual convention, according to witnesses who spoke to ABC News’ Jake Tapper. The McCain campaign has confirmed she visited the group’s 2000 convention, and she addressed its convention this year, as an incumbent governor whose oath of office includes upholding the Constitution of the United States.

Got that? An elected governor of a state within the United States of America is palling around with people who openly hate America. More than that — she married one of them and is married to him to this day.

And lest you think that "hate" is too strong a word:

The founder of the AIP was a man named Joe Vogler. Here’s what he had to say in a 1991 interview, only a few years before Palin attended its convention: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government."

He also said this: "And I won’t be buried under their damn flag. I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."

Vogler has also said: "I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions."

McCain apologists will argue that Sarah Palin was not a member of this group. But Obama wasn’t a member of any Ayers anti-American group, either. And again, Palin repeatedly courted the AIP, and her husband was a member for years.

This is of course deadly kryptonite to Palin’s hopes of going national. So of course the Cons and their useful-idiot allies in the national press have to pretend that she’s not connected with the AIP at all.   Our own David Neiwert has provided ample debunking of that nonsense — debunking courtesy of the AIP itself, which counted Palin as a member, along with her husband, for many years. Even without being a card-carrying member, she still to this day cuddles up to them and speaks at their meetings.

The decades of Republican rule in both the White House and Congress have shown that we can’t trust the workings of government to people who openly say that they hate government. Why should we hand over control of America to someone with close ties to groups that openly hate America itself?