Friday, July 3, 2009

Sarah Palin to Resign

Governor Palin will step down as Alaska's governor in the next few weeks.

Nobody knows why, yet, although I'm sure we all will soon enough. I wish her the best of luck for the future, whatever her course of action may be.

Update: Smitty (chief operating officer of The Other McCain) chides me in the comments for committing the unforgivable blogging sin: declining to speculate. Ok, let's see what some of the likely options are.

Possibly, Palin has had enough of elective politics and plans on finding other outlets for her talent and energy that will enable her to be of service to her state and/or her country. She is on record as claiming that she's spending 80% of her time having to deal with nuisance suits and bogus press stories, and Palin is one of the very few politicians whose word I would take if what she is saying is that she's retiring because she's not able to commit as fully to the day-to-day job of running the state as she thinks is warranted (yes, I believe she really is that conscientious).

The most important question is whether she is getting out of elective politics altogether. I hope she doesn't, but there are those who think that less than one term as governor would probably act to effectively bar her as a serious presidential candidate. Possibly, for 2012, but after that, who can say? Maybe she'll run for congress or the senate - a much easier task than going straight for the presidency, and a natural stepping stone for that prize in 2016.

Or maybe she's just had enough of the BS associated with politics and she's going to strike out in an entirely different direction. I wouldn't blame her if she did, but, again, I'm hoping we haven't seen the last of her on the national political stage. Palin is a natural, and I'd hate to think that the bungling of John McCain's incompetent handlers in rolling out her candidacy as Vice President has destroyed her career; if it has, then Schmidt et al have a lot more to answer for than merely helping John McCain lose the presidency (in retrospect, the latter outcome now seems to have been well-nigh inevitable, and, frankly, spoiling Palin's chances for higher office represents a far greater blunder than hanging on to John's coattails as he blundered off the cliff).

Update II: Friend and commenter Rebecca suggested earlier that the Left would go in for some rather outrageous spin. Well, that didn't take long.

7 comments:

RebeccaH said...

Look for the leftosphere to spin up to hurricane status with conspiracy/nutball speculation. Which may be one reason she's decided to quit.

:-(

smitty1e said...

Oh, come on and throw out some speculation, already.

JeffS said...

I'm of the opinion that Palin will let everyone know when she's good and ready. Speculation is just another way of saying "I dunno, so I'll make an edumacated guess."

Until then, who cares? Other than a bunch of leftie hacks and bitter Republicans, I mean.

And I'm with you, Paco. I'd be sad to see her leave politics, but I would blame her not at all. She will do fine in any endeavor she chooses, and

All of this merely emphasizes what a snake pit politics have become in this country. When decent people opt out to protect their families, and themselves, this has gone too far...especially when klassy klowns like Bubba Clinton can be an ex-president, married to the current Secretary of State, pay $1000 for a private session with a stripper....and no one cares.

Just how many other fine people (on either side of the aisle) might decline to run for office thanks to this fiasco?

Those leftie hacks and bitter Republicans ought to be tarred and feather, and thrown into the stocks for a month.

JeffS said...

RE Update II: Lord help us, Palin Derangement Syndrome is approaching pandemic proportions. I expect some people to actually drop dead because of this.

Minicapt said...

She's been invited to South Carolina as Sanford's replacement.

Cheers

richard mcenroe said...

I'll be interested to see if she stays with the GOP. I can't at this point see one earthly reason she should. Was there one peep out of the RNC over the nuisance suits, over Letterman, over the victimizing of her children? I certainly didn't get any party e-mails about it.

Bowler said...

seems like she probably didn't want people to spend much time thinking about this since she announced it the Friday before July 4th