Biden: Palin will have to defend ‘fairly extreme views,’

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave a good convention speech last week but has “fairly extreme views” that she’ll have to defend in the coming weeks, Democratic counterpart Joe Biden said here Monday.

Palin’s reported stance on global warming — that she’s skeptical about man-made causes — is “pretty far out there,” if the early reports on her are accurate, Biden said at a town hall meeting at Green Bay’s KI Convention Center.

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Gary Porter/MCT

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks to a crowd of supporters at the KI Convention Center in Green Bay, WI on Monday morning.

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In other remarks during a wide-ranging, 50-minute session, Biden said the assertion by Palin and Republican presidential candidate John McCain that they would bring about change in policy from President Bush’s administration was incorrect.

“Name me a single issue that affects your life — jobs, health care, education, energy — where McCain and Palin disagree with the president,” Biden told a crowd of about 700. “If you liked the last eight years, you’ll like the next four years of a McCain-Palin administration, because there is no fundamental change.”

Biden said that Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, had accurately assessed that the war in Afghanistan was going badly more than a year ago and called for more U.S. troops there, while McCain had said then that the war there was going well.

The plan Obama suggested for gradual troop withdrawal from Iraq nearly two years ago now appears likely to be endorsed by President Bush, Biden said. Contrary to critics who question Obama’s foreign policy credentials, he has proved to have a thoughtful grasp of the topic, said Biden.

He pledged that an Obama-Biden administration would preserve but never privatize Social Security, guarantee adequate health care and education benefits for returning GIs and enact universal health care legislation.

The Green Bay town hall meeting was the first appearance in Wisconsin for Biden since his Democratic nomination Aug. 28 as Barack Obama’s running mate.

Obama gave a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee but toned down the campaign rhetoric in deference to concerns about Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans.

Monday’s Green Bay visit by Biden came just three days after McCain and Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, made a campaign stop in Cedarburg. The Wisconsin focus was likely a reflection of how close the race is here. A double-digit lead for Obama in polling done early this summer had shrunk to just a slight edge for Obama before the parties’ nominating conventions.

National polling done over the weekend showed the presidential race a dead heat.

“Both campaigns understand if they don’t want to lose Wisconsin, they’ve got to come here,” said Phil Walzak, the Obama campaign’s Wisconsin spokesman.