As everyone has no doubt heard by now, Sarah Palin has resigned as Governor of Alaska. I actually think that this is a good move on her part, in terms of strategy for her obvious 2012 ambition – even though I think the way she went about it, in essence admitting that she couldn’t handle the investigations and pressure – are fatal to her bid. What do you all think? Did she do the right thing? I’m pretty obviously not a political fan of hers but I am curious what the many diehard supporters of Palin here think of her 2012 chances now.
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Nice to infer whatever you wanted to hear into things she never said. Come on, Aziz.
As for the investigations – they were constant and for trivial things and it was driving her and her family deeper and deeper into debt. And nothing ever comes of the “investigations.” No charges are ever filed and she’s consistantly exonerated.
You act like these investigations are trifling things. Not things consting her and her family hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You’re acting like the investigations and pressure are fair. They’re not. They’re meant only to destroy her.
As for her chances in 2012, I honbestly don’t think she’s going to run for the White House. I think she’s (wisely) chosen to work in grassroots efforts. She’s said she’s stepped down for a higher calling. I don’t know what that is, it could be just to spend more time with her ailing son, but I trust her to do the right thing.
I think that people are talking about 2012 and a White House run means two things:
1. Her friends still want to see her there.
2. Even after all the cheap-shot “investigations” and horribly slanted coverage, her enemies still fear she might.
Her chances are destroyed, and I think she knows that. If this is a move for the 2012 nom than it was the most idiotic choice I’ve seen in a long time. Since she served less than 2 years (some of which was on the campaign trail) she won’t be able to use the experience card. And abandoning her state won’t shine well, either.
My feeling is that she was getting tired of the idiotic “investigations” and said, “screw it.” She’s become a talking head on Fox News and get paid oodles more.
I hate to seem like I’m picking on Kevin or Jesse, but, there’s a certain irony there because Adsense is, at this moment as I type this, showing us a huge, slickly produced (i.e. expensive) ad right here on Dean’s World for something called “SarahPAC” with her mug plastered big on it. If she’s not running for President she’s doing a good job of hiding that fact. Not that having your own PAC means you’re running NECESSARILY, but, seriously? It’s like saying in 2009 that Hillary’s not running while seeing big ads for a “HillaryPAC.”
She’s running, and I don’t think she’s politically dead unless there’s some big revelation. Her resignation will play well with the party faithful who are convinced she’s the subject of endless persecution; how that plays with the general electorate two years hence is a completely different subject, and for a wide variety of reasons that may or may not matter at all by the time the general election rolls around even if she is the nominee.
I have no doubt she’s running–present tense. It’s not a matter of whether she’ll run, she already IS. It’s a question of if and when she ever makes that official.
Oh, for anyone who doesn’t know, Adsense is a system that constantly scans a web page, sees the words and such on a page, and puts up ads automatically based on what it thinks is relevant content. So if we were discussing Arnold Schwartzenegger, ads for Terminator movies might show up. If we’re discussing cooking, ads for kitchnware or recipe books or cooking TV shows might show up, or somesuch. It works well for many web sites but it’s particularly effective with blogs since whatever is the hot topic is likely to trip ads that are related in some way to that topic. Neither the site owner entirely controls this; those who place the ads just give them to Adsense and Adsense decides what sites to put them on. The ad buyer can say “OK, no sites matching these criteria,” so they have that level of control, and the site owners can also say “we will not accept these types of ads or ads from these companies or people,” but otherwise we don’t control it either.
It also takes Adsense a little time to notice and respond to things, for reasons I think should be obvious. It’s not that an article with “Sarah Palin” somewhere in it would automatically and instantly trip such an ad. So it’s entirely likely that neither Kevin nor Jesse even saw that when they commented, because it wasn’t even there. It’s just amusing right now; if I knew how to put a screen shot in a comment I would try it, because it’s just a bizarre juxtaposition to read comments from someone who says she’s ruined and she’s politically dead, and someone else who says she’s been persecuted and she really probably isn’t ever going to run, and BAM, massive ad for SarahPAC raising money for her and asking people to support her. %-)
Hell hath no furry like a media commentator whose narrative has been upset.
This is the way things were supposed to go: Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin would abide the pelting of a pitiless storm of law suits filed by her political opponents in Alaska, all of which have been turned aside by the courts; then she was supposed to run either for president or for some other national office, at which point the pelting would begin all over again.
As the Fourth of July approached, Palin announced that she was retiring as Governor of Alaska, and shortly thereafter the speculation hit the fan.
Vain speculators on the left, a good many of whom apparently read Vanity Fair, thought that Palin resigned because she could not bear the heat pouring out of the political kitchen. The Vanity Fair article, thousands of words long, drew the veil off some of the infighting that occurred in the John McCain political camp after McCain picked Palin to run as his vice presidential candidate, on the whole not a pretty picture. With the exception of a few new snark bites, there is nothing fresh in Todd Purdum’s piece, and Maureen Dowd, the New York Time’s Queen of scorn, is far better at the catty putdown than Purdum.
A sampling of Dowd’s bon bons: “Exquisite battiness… solipsistic meltdown so strange… incoherent, breathless and prickly… Sarah’s country-music melodramas… girlish burbling.”
Since the ascension of President Barack Obama, the left has found it inconvenient to write on national political issues.
Most of the chatter on television was devoted to two questions: Why had she done it, and is there political life after resignation? Running like a dark rumor through the chatter was the supposition that some unspeakable political faux pas had yet to be uncovered.
The answer to the second question was “probably not.” Some wiser heads with memories pointed out that other politicians had salvaged their careers after greater tragedies. In deference to Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, now suffering from a brain tumor, Chappaquiddick was not mentioned. In deference to Obama, the tax delinquencies of his Treasury Secretary remained in the commentary closet. As yet, there is no federal investigation of Sen. Chris Dodd’s property in Ireland.
The vindictive prosecution of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is a distant memory.
Last April, federal judge Emmet Sullivan formally accepted a motion to set aside a guilty verdict against former Sen.Ted Stevens of Alaska issued by President Barack Obama’s Attorney General. The presiding judge threw out the indictment, and called the case the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen. The judge also initiated a criminal contempt investigation of six members of the prosecution even though an internal probe by the Office of Professional Responsibility was in process. Sullivan said he was not willing to trust it due to the “shocking and disturbing” nature of the misconduct.
Palin herself suggested 1) that her family had been unjustly pummeled before and after the campaign, both by vain politicians and consumers of Vanity Fair; 2) that she was spending an inordinate amount of money defending herself from unmerited prosecutions; 3) that she cared about Alaska’s future, and that resigning now would enable the Lieutenant Governor of that state to carry on after she had left and most likely win a future campaign in his own right, thus keeping her beloved state in Republican hands. She was resigning, Palin said, “ … so the administration could continue effectively” without her. Self sacrifice of this kind is unheard of in national politics. Palin also intimated she would be willing to go on the road to support the candidacy of grown up politicians in either party.
Point 1 was studiously ignored by the Vanity Fair crowd; everyone but some small minded bloggers on the left conceded point 2; and point 3 was opaque to the kind of political beltway commentator who believes that politics ends at the borders of Washington DC. Anyone who had spent any time commenting on state politics would have had no problem processing point 3.
So, here we have a politician who cares about her family, cares about her reputation, cares about her state, thinks some ideas are bogus while others are worth sacrificing for, and wanted to avoid the perils of federal politically inspired prosecutions.
How could there possibly be a place for her in Washington politics?
Dean,
There’s no irony at all. If you cared to ask me (I can’t speak for Jesse), I’d have told you SarahPAC was created months ago (MSNBC reported on it Jan. 27th). Hell, Fred Thompson has a political action committee. You telling me he plans on running in 2012?
A PAC doesn’t have to have anything to do with a run for the White House. And, if what I said was true, that she’s going to get involved in grassroots efforts, then a PAC is still very useful.
Kevin: I don’t even see what’s relevant about the fact that she establisehd SarahPAC months ago. It seems like a non-sequitur. Unless I’m missing something about the old news that she’s had this PAC for a while?
As for such a PAC having nothing to do with running for the White House? There are many, many ways to get involved in grassoots efforts. They almost never involve setting up PACs where you ask people to support YOU rather than issues, to give money to the cause of YOU. Not in my experience.
It’s a safe assumption that the Governor is still running for President, in the same way that several other Republicans are currently running for President. Formally, said campaigns won’t begin for another year, year and a half or so, but who’s running early is already becoming apparent and the Governor is obviously one of them. If I’m wrong, the PAC either goes away or morphs into something other than “support Sarah.”
I think her resignation as Governor plays very well for her among the Republican faithful, and won’t mean a thing to the general electorate. Look for her to be in the field in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and a few other early primary states come early 2010, unless something breaks showing that she really was guilty of something criminal or grossly unethical. Look for her possibly to drop out quietly if polls show her a simply untenable candidate, and to be angling for a job in a hypothetical Republican administration. Otherwise, look for her to be a major contender in the early rounds when the primaries start in 2012, comparable at least to what guys like Guiliani and Huckabee were in 2008.
Quitting the Governor’s mansion in Juneau makes perfect sense if she doesn’t really want to be Governor anymore; she can concentrate on her PAC and supposedly doing grassroots work by collecting money to Support Sarah.
I don’t think I’m being cynical, either. She has a perfectly decent shot and isn’t doing anything wrong.
I think it’s a smart move on her part.
Look, the Dems gambled on a young, attractive, inexperienced candidate — and won.
McCain gambled on a young, attractive, inexperienced running mate — and lost.
That’s life. Nothing against Palin. Nice lady, nice family, totally unfair treatment by the press. Did some good things (I think) in Alaska. But, was she really Presidential timber? Certaintly, not yet. Nor, do I really think she intended to be. She rose like a rocket in Alaska, and then got caught in a maelstrom of unforeseen and unforeseeable forces, pushing her up higher and higher, while her detractors got more and more personal. That’s politics.
I think she got $10 Million for a book deal, which should provide her family with financial security in Alaska for decades. Take a break, make a comeback in a few years. Good move on her part.
She wasn’t my preferred choice, but so what? I wish her well.
–HB
Dean,
Again, Fred Thompson has a PAC and are you saying you believe he too is going to run again for the White House in 2012? Should we see him beginning his presidential campaign in 2010 in places like Iowa and New Hampshire?
Hank,
You know you’re comparing apples and oranges, right? You’re comparing a presidential candidate to a presidential candidate’s running mate.
Last I looked Palin wasn’t at the top spot of the GOP ticket. You’re acting like the race was between Obama and Palin instead of Obama and McCain. If this is your view then you have a point. But it doesn’t reflect reality.
The American people didn’t reject Palin last year. They rejected McCain.
Aziz:
We’ll see if your condescending and partisan “buh-bye” title to this turns out to be accurate or not.
Well, we’ll have to see.
My impression, however, is that this will not play well to the general electorate who were already having doubts about her at the end of McCain’s run.
Then again, I guess two years is an eternity in politics.
I don’t think Sarah Palin had any real chance at the Republican nomination, but then I’m not a Republican so what do I know.
If she did get the nomination, I don’t think she would have had much appeal to moderates and independents.
After she resigned as governor, I cannot see how she has any chance. If she thinks the press was being mean to her and investigating all these trivial scandals, she hasn’t seen anything compare to what happens when you are president. If she can’t take the heat of a few scandals in Alaska, then she is clearly not presidential material. I cannot imagine independents and moderates seeing this differently.
Don’t know if she just wants out of electoral politics, or is angling for the 2012 Presidential race, but if the latter, I agree with what Republicans like Rove, Rollins and Huckabee said this weekend: that was the wrong way to accomplish it.
The prospect of the tenacious “Sarah Barracuda” being a quitter will cause a lot of would-be supporters to look elsewhere. Look at the shot that fellow Republican Murkowski took at her, and yes I know there is a history there, but a public shot like that comes about when you think a large segment of the public will agree with you.
She has become a celebrity, not a serious Presidential candidate, at least not 2012. Got no problem with her making such a decision for family reasons, but it isn’t compatible with being elected President in the near future.
Kevin, you infer things you want to hear (or fear to hear) into every microscopic move by Obama, don’t you? come on, indeed – politics is chess, and every move is subject to scrutiny. If Palin wanted to be excluded from such, she could pull a Michael Jackson and become a recluse. Instead, shes become a public figure by her own choosing.
I agree with Dean that this move by her is pretty saavy. I dont agree that she has a shot – whatever chances she had, she just threw away. The execution matters, and the GOP as a whole has too many people angling for teh brass ring in ‘12 – and Palin pissed a lot of people off.
But really – if you take her at her word, that she left because of the pressure and the investigations (which were entirely reasonable ones, initiated by the state of Alaska, and not a witch-hunt by any stretch f teh imagination, unless of course you apply exactly teh same double standard that Palin herself always cries victimhood about), then she doesnt have teh stones to run for President, let alone be President. Compare her to Hillary, who endured for real everything that Palin likes to pretend she’s had to deal with, and far more – and come out stronger. I was never a major Hillary fan but thats the kind of resolve and character we need in a Presidential candidate, let alone a President.
Palin wants to be President. I dont see how anyone can deny this. Shes decided Alaska is too small-time and is moving on. I found this parting shot from her facebook page rather hilarious, and yet also rather significant in its implication:
typical Palin victim card – and a shot at Obama, but also an implicit acknowledgement that she wants to move upwards to “higher calling”. It also equates being governor of Alaska to being a Senator, and being actually elected President to retiring to the lectue circuit for the big bucks.
CC, she said buh-bye, not me – its Palin who is cutting and running, bored of the job she was elected to do, so she can chase the big money in the lower 48 along with her “higher calling”. I think its a good strategic move, but it definitely doesn’t reflect well on her character. I for one doubt that this means we will see less of Palin, in fact I think its prelude to much more.
Aziz, it syas something that you interpret (or maybe buy into someone else’s interpretation of) “higher calling” as Presidential Office. Broaden your horizons a little.
Roger wrote, “She has become a celebrity, not a serious Presidential candidate, at least not 2012.”
And this is different from last year’s Democrat candidate exactly how? (HAH!)
I’m not disputing the point. My point is that we’ve entered an age where “celebrity” may matter more than “capability” or “experience.”
Derek,
One difference is that Obama “earned” his position by taking on the odds on favorite and beating her in the challenging primary process. Palin was plucked out of obscurity by one man’s decision. That doesn’t mean Palin couldn’t “earn” a nomination, only that she hasn’t demonstrated that yet. With her well documented problems during the fall campaign, she really does need to demonstrate gravitas. Quitting her only heavyweight electoral job without a coherent explanation doesn’t help.
You are correct that “celebrity” can be an asset for electoral politics. But to be President, you need a type of celebrity closer to Norman Schwarzkopf in the early 90’s, and less like Michael Jackson. Palin is sliding closer to the latter.
The American people didn’t reject Palin last year. They rejected McCain.
Ok, then if McCain has been rejected and is too old to run in 2012, then obviously Palin steps in as the de facto leader of the opposition, and is beloved by millions, respected and feared by the media, and ………is quitting while ahead?
Sorry, this makes no sense.
She’s a nice lady, who is in too deep — like a great high school pitcher, who gets drafted into the pros too early.
I don’t dismiss her, like the East Coast elite, I just don’t think she’s ready to assume a command role, and I think it is wise for her to step aside, while someone more capable assumes the role.
The left, on the otherhand, is sad to see her go, because they like pummeling her, and think she is a relatively weak opponent. I don’t place myself in this camp, I’m juss calling it like I see it.
I bet money she won’t run for Prez in 2012.
–HB
She “wants to be President”, Aziz?
Well, I admit I haven’t followed her real close, but I haven’t seen any evidence that she particularly does.
I mean, I suppose we can infer that most politicians (and moreso, most Governors) wouldn’t turn the office down if it was handed to them, but her “wanting” the job enough to run for it in 2012?
I don’t see much evidence for it. At least as plausible a reading (possibly better, in fact) for her VP bid in 08 is that the Party asked her to and she supported the Party – as a team player does.
Roger,
I agree that Palin hasn’t “earned” a nomination the “hard way,” yet. But, who knows? Maybe one reason she quit while she was ahead in Alaska was so that she can prepare for next year by brushing up on what’s happening in the other 56 (kidding!!!) states.
I’d argue, however, that the celebrity of then-Senator Obama was more than just an “asset.” It was instrumental in his election, even though it was, in my opinion, more “Jacksonian” than “Schwarzkopfian.” He’s remained popular personally, even as criticism of his policies has increased.
It’s a far cry from Henry Clay, that’s for sure.
Hank, you’re on for a gentleman’s bet (no money, gambling is against my religion
If you win (Palin doesn’t run in 2102), I’ll let you write a guest post on my blog at Beliefnet, your topic of choice, no editorial interference
If I win (she declares for candidacy), i dunno, what do I get?
I would indeed be sad to see Palingo, not because I think shes particularly foolish or an object of my derision but because strategically she does act as a focus for devotion by a segment of teh Republican Party that has really undermined conservatism in favor of Republicanism. It woudl be awesome if she peeled off the social conservative vote to a new third party (though I note that Huckabee stil has his sights set on that niche, and he is already pushing back on Palin for his own bonafides). To that end if she vanished it would be a disaster because the viability of the GOP as an authentic alternative to the Democratic Party would continue to flatline.
If you win (Palin doesn’t run in 2102), I’ll let you write a guest post on my blog at Beliefnet, your topic of choice, no editorial interference If I win (she declares for candidacy), i dunno, what do I get?
You’re on! When I win, I am already salivating about my unedited piece, tentatively entitled, “The Myth of AIDS in the Muslim World”:)
If you win, I will: (a) Publically denounce Scoop Jackson, or (b) Publically condemn Netanyahu as a Yahoo or (c) donate $50 bucks to the charity of your choice.
There is no chance Palin runs in 2012. Occam’s razor — she is quitting, because she doesn’t want to be a political pinata for the left or a trojan horse for the right.
Nice gal, though. Smart, but not a professional politician, which can be a good thing. I wish her well.
–HB
To be honest, I’d like to see the piece you mention, irrespective of whether its on my blog or not. Write it!
I’ll take option c. Gives us something to look forward to! Now, I actually care about the GOP race
I wish her well too, and bear her no malice. But I dont see any reason to hold her accomplishments in all that high regard, either.
Two years ago the very same pundits who are calling Sarah Palin “done” were calling Hillary Clinton “inevitable.”
I don’t pay any attention to these so-called “experts” and their opinions. The only consistent thing about them is that they are always wrong.
Aziz: Talk about inferring what someone WANTS to hear… Sarah Palin very clearly said this is NOT “buh-bye” when she said she was moving to a higher calling and was “not retreating, but advancing in a new direction.” Hearing “buh-bye” in that is pretty selective hearing.
I will go on record saying that I don’t understand what Sarah Palin thinks she is accomplishing here, but my guess is that we have not heard the last of Sarah Palin and the unbroken string of the pundits failure to predict the political future of candidates will remain intact.
Again, testable. I’ll remember what you all said in two, four and six years.
Will you?
I will make one prediction. Now that the Left has proven that vicious lying attacks on the family, including young disabled children, of politicians is EFFECTIVE, you’ll see a lot more of it. And some of it will be targeted at them.
CC,
I’m a little confused. You take Aziz to task for not taking Palin at her word that she isn’t quitting or retreating, yet you say “vicious lying attacks on the family, including young disabled children, of politicians is EFFECTIVE”.
What am I missing? And if we are to take Palin at her word, she now seems to be claiming that “politics as usual” is to stay and fight. So, in most circumstances, apparently it wouldn’t be effective.
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