While Sarah Palin's resignation caught everyone by surprise, what wasn't surprising was the reaction after the initial shock had passed. The reaction was as predictable as ever: If you didn't like Sarah Palin, you thought her decision to resign validated your view that she's an empty-headed trophy candidate who never seemed particularly serious or thoughtful.
If you were an unabashed Palin supporter you reacted with disbelief but stood behind her, thought she delivered a great address, even if it was a resignation, and you may have been one of many predicting "Palin in 2012."
At one point, there was MSNBC was talking about how Palin's political career was over; meanwhile, Fox News was talking about how she was a giant victim. And believe it or not, at that precise moment, CNN was talking about Michael Jackson. Call it the luck of the remote.
No one knows for sure --at least not at the moment-- why she resigned. Not even the ardent conservative pundits that regularly grace the TV for Fox News are in agreement. On Thursday night before her announcement, Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News:
Palin… has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following. But she is not a serious candidate for the presidency. She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn't. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won't work. It could work for eight weeks if you're the number two candidate, as she was last year. But even so, she got singed a lot in that campaign. You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you're running for the presidency.
On Friday after the announcement, Bill Kristol phoned into Fox News to say: "If I had to guess, we just saw the opening statement of the 2012 campaign." And he later expanded on that in a blog post for the Weekly Standard.
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell reported:
Talking to people who are very close to Sarah Palin, I have been told that she has told her supporters that she is out of politics, period. She is fed up with politics. She doesn't like her life. She feels like she has to raise her family. She's sick of the commute from Wasilla to the capital and she really does not want to run for higher office. This is not the case where she is stepping down in order to figure the way for a presidential run. In fact, she has told some of her biggest backers in the national Republican Party that they are free to choose other candidates for 2012.
Other speculations read more like playing numbers at the roulette table: She's about to be indicted for some serious transgression; she's about to sign a contract with Clear Channel Nut radio and Fox News for millions of dollars; she's about to spend three years running for President, gallivanting around the country, making speeches (for which she can charge a hefty fee), and build up the campaign coffer while attempting a butterfly-from-the-cocoon makeover. Or maybe some combination of all three.
This we know: Her popularity ratings in Alaska have dropped significantly --even among members of her own party. Most political observers --the honest ones, anyway-- agree that she hasn't managed her public image very well since losing in November. Instead of laying some groundwork to further her political career, either for a Senate run in 2010 or a presidential run in 2012, she's been laying eggs. The Letterman controversy? She may have gotten a lot more mileage out of it by showing a lot more grace. Get a thick skin, say it was a distasteful remark but I've got more important things to worry about.
I'm no fan of Sarah Palin --never was. I didn't dislike her; I just never thought she was qualified. I still suspect that she was used by the Republican Party to electrify a based John McCain could never attract. By introducing Sarah Palin to the public last fall, Republican power brokers, John McCain and whoever else was behind the decision to choose her as a running mate violated a cardinal rule in salesmanship: Never overpromise; never under deliver. McCain gambled; he lost. She wasn't ready. She may never be.
There's no question she had the kind of elemental sincerity that connects with Middle America and she did that. The problem was that she didn't have the thick skin to survive the public scrutiny or the knowledge base to deal with the cynicism that comes with being under the microscope. I'm guessing she had no idea what she was getting into and never really figured out how to handle it. And maybe, if you're to believe Republican insiders from the presidential campaign, she never wanted to figure out how to handle it. She didn't want to be handled by McCain's people, she was gonna go it her own way and she simply had no background whatsoever for the hard question that would come from a skeptical media.
Yes, you can stomp your feet like a child and call it "the liberal media" but you'd be lying to yourself. I don't suppose you were calling them the liberal media when they spent more than a month running video clips of a minister delivering sermons that turned both heads and stomachs. But the minute Governor Palin went deer-in-the-headlights over a simple question from Katie Couric about which national publications she read, all of a sudden, you wanna call that an ambush.
To be honest, I'm not sure what irritates me more, the circumstances surrounding Sarah Palin or all the two-faced supporters complaining about how she was treated who. All they proved was that they can dish out but can't take it.
People on the right who want to blame the media, the left, George Soros --pick your conspiracy theory-- stop whining: Any hell Sarah Palin caught, fairly or unfairly, was no different than the beating Hillary Clinton got both as a First Lady and as a presidential candidate, and it was no different than what Barack Obama was subjected to by all his critics. How many of you who didn't like the Palin jokes were sending and receiving chain e-mails claiming that Obama was a Muslim, Obama was a socialist, Obama wasn't a citizen, or did you get the one with images of Obama in racist stereotype, while eating watermelon in that barefoot Negro kind of way? No problem there. Why? Because you didn't like the guy and you were glad to dump on him. Oh, but your girl Sarah? How dare they!
Same thing would be true with Hillary Clinton, who, incidentally, was pilloried relentlessly by David Letterman while she was first Lady and long before her husband's hanky panky in a dark, windowless corridor became public knowledge. You Sarah Palin fans: Bet you thought those Hillary jokes were funny, huh? And you defenders of Hillary, how often were you bashing Sarah Palin as a vacuous, pin-up poster designed to attract aging white Republican males fantasizing about bedding down a MILF?
The bottom line here is that what Sarah Palin reminds us of --again-- is that there are people on both sides of the political aisle, though diametrically opposed ideologically, are exactly alike: Sore losers and crybabies who refuse to admit they're both driving on the same two-way street.
Maybe the person with the thin skin isn't Sarah Palin; maybe it's you.
I want to feel sorry for Sarah Palin but I don't. She was earnest and motivated, and pretty much lost in the brutal backstabbing world of American politics. But she was the one who decide to jump in feet first. Conservatives are always talking about accountability. Well, put your money where your mouth is: She made a decision and it came with consequences, so stop playing the blame game. It's no different than a matter here in Sacramento, where I live, when the assembly speaker for the state legislature, a Democrat, claimed that conservative talk radio hosts were one reason California lawmakers were unable to cobble together a budget for a state horribly in debt. Those darned conservative talk show hosts were "terrorizing" Republican lawmakers into not voting for tax increases. Oh, stuff it Madame Speaker. Like Governor Plain, it doesn't matter who said what; none of it would've happened if you'd turned down the job Senator McCain offered you, just like none of it would've happened in Sacramento if lawmakers had done the job they were elected to do. Now take your medicine and shut up.
I've no idea why Governor Palin resigned and I don't much care. Sarah Palin turned out to be better as comedic fodder than as serious national candidate and if Republicans want to be taken seriously as a party in 2012, they'd be best to lose the baggage from the past and look to the future with a completely different face. Forget about Sarah Palin. Move on. (No pun intended if you're thinking of the advocacy group.) Sarah Palin ain't the future. Don't believe it? Put her out there in 2010 or 2012; if the Sarah Palin you love and admire today is the same Sarah Palin peering onto the national stage when the race for the Republican presidential nomination begins in earnest, you'll get laughed out of town and Barack Obama will clean her clock. That's not me waving the flag for President Obama; that's me saying the United States needs at least two viable and equally credible political parties and sorry, right now there's only one and it ain't the Republicans. Sarah Palin is one reason why.
Can she remake herself and overcome that? It's possible. Anything's possible in politics. A doofus governor who mangled the language somehow managed to become president; a novice Senator with a gift for eloquence managed to become president. With the kind of shallow voters we have in the United States who are more easily swayed by slick marketing campaigns and bumper sticker slogans than the nuances of complex domestic and foreign policies, even a comedian could get elected to public office. Hmmm, wait a minute…
With apologies to Letterman...
Reasons Sarah Palin is resigning:
Investigators found a human head inside a mounted caribou on her living room wall
Needs more time to keep an eye on Russia from her front porch
Don't tell me she went hiking on the Appalachian Trail too
Couldn't find the time to do her nails and actually work as the Governor of Alaska
Needs a couple of years to get her GED and learn to speak a single coherent sentence
Hasn't figured out she's somewhat detached from reality and deluded into believing she's presidential timber
Wanted to find out what happens if you put lipstick on a lame duck
Wanted to make all those lazy reporters in the liberal media put on their makeup instead of get drunk by the pool.
Apparently, now her husband is pregnant
Comments
You are a total elite snob. A moron of sorts. Nobody cares what you and your liberal, leftist, hateful manifesto proclaims. In fact, it's opinionated garbage with half baked facts: "Obama was a socialist". He is a socialist. And Palin scares people like you because there are more of her around than you. Get used to it, snob!
James: Thanks for proving my point.
People like you are the reason she resigned. She's a human being. I hate my country. I hate that it's filled with people like you. Why can't we just split without all the blood?
pub says: "People like you are the reason she resigned. She's a human being."
No, Pub, Sarah Palin is the reason she resigned. She made her bed, had to sleep in it and decided she didn't like the mattress. I don't dislike her; she was qualified. Party bigwigs knew it but used her anyway to try and win a contest.
"People like me" are the same people who picked on Hillary Clinton and called her daughter a dog. That was acceptable to people who hated Hillary Clinton --was that people like you?
Palin's situation is no different. Politicians (and their families) have been catching hell for as long as there's been politics --it doesn't matter which party. The people who defend her are just like the people who defend Hillary or Obama or who attack them. It's hypocrisy, and hypocrisy knows no party. That's the real point of the article, as both you and James readily demonstrate with your comments. You're not mad at me over Palin; you're mad that I called out your hypocrisy.
Thank you for your article. I sincerely doubt that the resignation of governor S. Palin has any thing to do with hits that she's taken from the media and her political opponents because it just goes with the territory. And as you mentioned, SOS H. Clinton has been at the receiving end of this venom since she appeared on the national stage in 1992. It has been relentless, mean and down right pathological from the left, right and center and she still standing strong. As the saying goes, what does not kill you make you stronger. Let's be patient and we'll find out what the future holds for governor Palin soon enough.
As per 9:49am: "I don't dislike her; she was qualified"
She was "unqualified."
--Bruce
alinosof says: "...Let's be patient and we'll find out what the future holds for governor Palin soon enough."
Precisely, as was the point of the last paragraph.
No, you are actually one of the people who says nasty things about Palin. I've never said a bad word about Chelsea. You're projecting your inappropriate behavior on everyone. We could save all this nonsense by splitting the country.
pub says: "No, you are actually one of the people who says nasty things about Palin... We could save all this nonsense by splitting the country."
No, I have an opinion: She wasn't qualified. The fact she was made fun of comes with the territory. The list that followed was meant to be funny. I make a good living poking fun at (or being critical of) all politicians (or anyone else thrusting themselves in the public eye). Palin provided as many opportunities as anyone else under the microscope. What's good for the goose is good for the gander; maybe "people like you" just want the goose. Just admit it: You like Palin and you don't like that she's picked on. She only has herself to blame for being a target. The country doesn't need to split; it needs to grow up. Either don't criticize or make fun of anyone or go after everyone and grow a thicker skin. You don't like it? That's YOUR problem, not mine.
Now Bruce is taking a different angle on this issue. Now he says he doesn't care if he's a jerk who humiliates people like Rush Limbaugh --- just grow a thicker skin.
Bruce, do what you want. I have no desire to continue this conversation with you. I absolutely loathe liberals. I wasn't a big Palin fan. I wanted Giuliani, but liberals are filthy the way they go after people. My opinion is split the country because I don't want to live your way of life that considers filth as "Americans growing up."
Let's hope this is one of the last 4th of July celebrations for this country.
pub says: "Now Bruce is taking a different angle on this issue. Now he says he doesn't care if he's a jerk who humiliates people like Rush Limbaugh..."
So, are you name-calling? Here's the key comment in your post: "I absolutely loathe liberals."
Of course you do. That's why you ignore when conservatives do exactly what you claim liberals do: "liberals," you say, "are filthy the way they go after people."
Some are, just as some conservatives are equally filthy. You just don't want to admit that because you hate liberals and like conservatives. If you hated conservatives, you'd be accusing them of loathsome behavior. We shouldn't tolerate that behavior on either side but we do because we cheer for OUR side and not the other. That's hypocritical and you're mad because you've been called on the carpet for your hypocrisy. You shouldn't have any desire to continue this conversation because you can't do it without revealing your duplicity with every word you type.
How dare this women step all over the still hot story of Jackson, Jack$on and $harpton.
So much speculation, so much hate so few neuron connections by so many.
Wasn't it Sarah Palin who decried Hillary as a "whiner" when she said she'd faced more sexism as a woman candidate? What was it? Something along the lines of:
"When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or you know maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think you know that doesn’t do us any good – women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country."
Now SHE can't take the heat, eh? Hillary didn't quit. Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.
All this is rubish. Our leaders are chosen right now by Soros...follow the $. Palin was easy for his $ to "take out". Let's see what he does about Romney...beside belittle his underwear.
Louise says: "All this is rubish. Our leaders are chosen right now by Soros...follow the $. Palin was easy for his $ to "take out". Let's see what he does about Romney...beside belittle his underwear."
With all due respect, I think blaming any of the GOP's problems on George Soros is a convenient excuse for people in denial who refuse to accept an immutable fact: Their candidate lost in 2008. Supporters of Al Gore (or more accurately, opponents of George Bush) used this same kind of thinking when the 2000 election was finally certified by the U-S Supreme Court. I don't even know how you can bring up Romney as a hopeful who is impervious to "Soros money" when Romney failed to capture his party's nomination in '08. Let's try to see both sides of this issue for what it is.
Bruce, I happen to believe that conservative talk radio does have something to do with the legislative impasse in California and elsewhere. Yes, it's the legislators who dig in their heels and won't compromise to get things done to run the state, but it is conservative talk radio that has long poisoned the political discourse that it has, almost singlehandedly, created that conservative base that allows legislators at both the state and national levels to not compromise and just say no to everything except a tax cut. My retired military brother-in-law, who voted for GWB in 2000 and 2004, is an active member of his Rotary Club here in the Southeast. Early in 2008 he told a very prominent Republican in his club that the GOP was the reason the country was unable to have a respectful political dialogue. The party was and is marginalized by a an ever shrinking percentage of supporters who demand absolute idealogical fealty from its elected party leaders and representatives.
dww44 -- I offered a lengthier reponse than this space can provide in a separate column. Hope it answers some of your points.
My prediction is she will not run for office, she instead will choose a format where she cannot be questioned, speeches, fox network, etc.
She is a ineffective politican and she understands this in the real world when she is not in total control of the subject matter.
The bottom line is she has a beauty queen persona, all about image and attention. I wrote this 02/13/08
Hey all you Palintologists out on the web, please classify just what a Pit Bull with lipstick exactly is as a species? Closely related to SpiroTagnewus or Stupideobushism! I think it might be unique to Alaska as a undiscovered cousin to a Yeti! Would it be a good idea for Sarah to go hunting with Cheney? I think if we give her more time she will open mouth and insert BIG FOOT! HOCKEYMAMA, POOCHIEMAMA, NOLIKEOBAMA MAMA will the real Sarah Slim Shadddy please stand up, please stand up!! McCains new book after he fails to win and she just fails " A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE" The Sarah Palin story
Obama was not and is not a socialist... your info obviously has'nt been verified or you would not have mede this comment. Research things that you hear or read in new punlications...jeez you are an idiot!
James, you are quite out of it and illustrates what has happened to my (former) Republican Party. Palin was never qualified to run for national office, was handled with kid gloves by the press, never having to answer for any of her vicious comments about her Democratic opponents or her many idiotic faux pas. She helped lose the election and why she is on the national stage now is beyond me. She is not an energy expert and knows little about anything. Look at your local politicians; they have equal expertise to hers. As a Goldwater Republican who regretably voted for Bush in 2000 and saw him decimate my military with an unnecessary war, making me a Democrat for life, I resented the danger that the Neocons placed us in. I slowly learned that the far right that Palin represents despise the democratic process and are possessed of so much hubris that anything that would advance their righteous cause would be justified. Sign me: Fed up MD, COL, USAF (retired).
PUB and James, Palin is only scary because the US has citizens that thought she had leadership qualities. Why do you think she was qualified? Yes, she is attractive with a great personality and terrific delivery of her speeches, but didn't it bother you when she couldn't answer anything of substance?? Didn't it bother you that she DID support the Alaska Separatist Party (making her an America last supporter and a joke of her patriotism) or her endorsement of a minister who hounded an innocent woman out of town as a witch? Didn't it bother you that she was a key factor in the Republican Presidential election loss; how can you forgive her losing the middle independents? Liberal policies are Not Socialism any more than the Bush years policies of suspending habeas corpus, listening into our conversations and supporting torture methods that endangered our troops and cost us our moral leadership were close to Nazism (oh, wait, such totalitariansm is a bit close, isn't it?)
Kenneth: Don't bother asking difficult intelligent questions. Palin supporters like James and Pub have no better chance of answering them thoughtfully than Sarah Palin did. As a (former) Republican, you should be angry with your party for having used her to try and steal the election during her honeymoon period with the voters. She couldn't even last long enough to fake her way through that.
As for Bush: His legacy may well be that he destroyed his party, and that's sad. The country needs a solid Republican Party --a sensible one, not one dominated by zealots and psychopaths.
Maybe your right. Maybe she is not qualified,I mean, She's a woman. That seems to be the general run of things, means she must be an air head. What a bunch of crap!! Look what we ended up with, a hell of an orator, but little else. Print more money, borrow more from China, promise everything and produce nothing. Personally I believe people like you and Joy Behar deserve everything you are going to get from this great President. Bet JFK is rolling in his grave being compared to this idiot!
Richard, she is an airhead because she is an airhead, not because she is a woman and my PhD wife would kill me if the though even crossed my mind. It was Mr Bush who put us in debt and created circumstances leading to the economic mess we are in. This severe recession required pretty drastic action and is an exam of what capitalism can do if not regulated well c intelligent oversight (guess what, people are greedy and ready to trample over other people for profit). Palin did Not know enough or have enough experience to be on the national stage. Yes, education and intelligence does help people perform competently. Perhaps you didn't read all my comment about the damage Bush did to the military and to the country's image and reputation as well as demonstrating to our enemies where our weaknesses lie. How can you think Palin was good for the Republican Party? She helped it disintegrate and as a Republican for 40 years, I would like it to succeed, but minus the insanities.
Mr. Freel: I think your comments are off base. Governor Palin was not and may never be qualified for higher office. She proved that AFTER she was introduced. No one decided on the day she was rolled out that, "Oh, a woman; NOT qualified." She demonstrated that later, on her own.
Also, I think it a bit shallow and talking-point-ish to call Obama a "hell of an orator, but little else." He's far more than an orator. He's clearly a thinker, careful, deliberate, recognizing that issues facing the country are complex and without easy solutions. Are his policies the best ones? Those are matters on which reasonable people can reasonably disagree, but I think it's way too soon to make judgments. It took us 30 years to get where we are and fixing that will take time. You don't have to like Obama, but he's no idiot. What if his choices work? Be patient. Let's see what happens. If it doesn't work, then voters can make the necessary adjustments and the country will be just fine.
Kenneth MD USAF - I find it hard to believe that you were a Repub for 40 yrs. How can you turn 180 on the Rebup planks of lower taxes, smaller gov. representative government instead of a commanding one (which we have now). The Dems do not represent any of that. I agree that Bush ruined the party (he was no republican) but I find it hard to believe you were a staunch repub and you give up the principals because of a bad outing? Although I like her a lot, I agree Palin is not ready for higher office. I do think she has a level head and in a plain speaking and thinking way, can connect with a large segment of America. I think her reasons given for quitting are very logical, plausible and bottom line, no matter how you spin it, is ultimately good for the citizens of Alaska. Her waste of time and money to defend all the bricks thrown is an ultimate drain on Alaska. Time will tell how this plays out, but after this all blows over, I think we will see her again on the national stage.
Lee: I can understand why Kenneth left the GOP. You say George Bush was no Republican; I would agree. But I don't see Sarah Palin as one, either. My guess is many people would like a party that stands for sensible taxation, smart regulation, and a government that provides what we need, protects against what we don't, and doesn't intrude into our personal lives. That's more of a middle than we tend to govern. We run in ideological extremes in our country. The pendulum has swung to the left; it'll swing to the right again. I'd like to see it stop in the middle. That's hard to do when you have whack jobs fanning the flames of extremism in their respective parties. There's a political opportunity here: Democrats shouldn't blow it and/or Republicans should seize it. And when they disagree, let them be reasonable, not disagreeable and/or looking to score cheap political points through boiler plate rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans. That creates more problems than it solves.
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