Like Everyone Else, We're Wondering WHY Palin Suddenly Resigned As Governor Of Alaska

Like Dave Neiwert in his book The Eliminationists, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that there is a real problem in this country with domestic right wing terrorism. This week they reported on 75 plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since the carnage in Oklahoma City. Few Republican elected officials-- exceptions being lunatic fringe extremists like Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), Steve Stockman (R-TX), David Duke (R-LA)-- embrace these terrorist groups overtly and publicly. Many in the party, on the other hand, have learned about winking and nodding and using coded phrases to make clear where their sympathies lie. Generally speaking, in Idaho, if you don't want to be associated with racists and right-wing terrorists you join the Democrats, not the Republicans. When the national Democratic Party declared it would no longer coddle racists, white southerners defected en masse to the GOP, led by hate-filled right-wing Democrats like Strom Thurmond (SC), Jesse Helms (NC), Phil Gramm (TX), and Dick Shelby (AL). Most Democrats breathed a sign of relief and were happy to see them go-- wondering why a few, like Zell Miller (GA) and Dan Boren (OK) stayed-- while the Republican Party not only courted them and welcomed them with open arms, they transformed the entire nature of their party's ideology to accommodate racism and eliminationism.

John McCain never felt especially comfortable with leading this parade, but, in a nod in that dark direction, he picked someone to run as his VP, Sarah Palin, for whom it came very natural. By all means read the account by CBS News of Sarah Palin's relationship, as the Republican vice presidential nominee, with the secessionist extremists of the Alaska Independence Party, a party she went beyond winking and nodding at-- and a party of which her husband Todd was a member for seven years. Palin didn't like it one bit when Neiwert exposed her extremism on CNN and she went screeching to McCain's campaign manager to make it go away. They said they couldn't change history and suggested she stonewall and avoid the topic by claiming, however incongruously, that Todd loves America.

Of course, the question on everyone's mind-- since Palin suddenly announced that she was resigning as governor of Alaska-- is why? And why so sudden? Which scandal is it that caused her political collapse? Is the kick back scandal enough to have sent her packing? In Alaska? Remember, even in the midst of huge public shitstorms and scandals beyond what anyone could be expected to recover from, far right extremists David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Mark Sanford (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) have stuck with the GOP scandal mantra-- unless they catch you, and photograph you, with a live boy or a dead girl, just hang in there and the GOP base will forget. I think in Palin's case we can be sure it was neither a live boy nor a dead girl. So what made her resign? Bill Kristol-- along with other delusional wingnut true believers-- thinks it's to prepare for a presidential run in 2012.

[S]he's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

Other wingnuts, every bit as extreme and delusional as Kristol, are less optimistic. Few people outside of the lunatic fringe take Palin-worshipper Jonah Goldberg seriously but he's already declared that she's blown it. If most Americans feel they need a hot bath after reading a typical Goldberg screed, Palin fans find him as right as rain: "There’s a reason why the Left and much of the media establishment hated you from day one. Some hated you out of the fear that you might stop Barack Obama’s unfolding coronation. Others because you seemed to expose the snobbery, arrogance, and ideological pieties of elite feminism. Your beauty, your status as a working mom, your blue-collar husband, your bravery in taking on the political establishment in Alaska, your proud status as a pro-lifer and mother of a special-needs child: All of these things were-- and are-- deeply threatening to a secular left-wing cultural elite."

Even loony Jonah admits that most Americans see Palin as a laughing stock but he doesn't think it matters at all because, when push comes to shove he believes that Sarah Palin is "the 'It Girl' of the GOP." As opposed to... Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell? Another disappointed rightist in another far right GOP propaganda throw-away seems ready to start weeping:

Sarah Palin's resignation is an appalling dereliction of duty and a highly cynical move to set herself up for a presidental run for which she is manifestly unqualified... It is an absolute dereliction of duty to quit mid-term. When you run for office, you are making a promise to your constituents to serve out your term (unless you get elected to higher office or have one of the aforementioned compelling reasons not to do so). To do otherwise is, in effect, to break your word. It is a sign of a lack of integrity.

...What Sarah Palin did today was get out before the real challenges of the job (whatever challenges there are for such an easy job) really rear their heads. The going got tough in terms of spurious ethics charges against her, and she took off. That's cowardly. That's not sign of staying power. It's a sign of wanting to get out while the getting is good, in order to become a full-time candidate for a presidential race that won't culminate for 3 1/2 more years. It's a little too calculating, by half-- or more.

I just listened to her speech announcing her decision, and found it singularly unimpressive. "This was a rambling, bombastic, self-centered, 'poor me' kind of speech." That's how Mike Carey of the Anchorage Daily News just described her speech on Fox News. I agree. He then said it was, darn, I already can't remember if he said it was "pitiful" or "pathetic," but it was some word like that. Again, I agree. It was a speech in which she clearly made a bid for a national audience-- not a very effective bid, but a transparent one-- but didn't adequately explain to the people of Alaska why she was relinquishing her duty... Statesmen hang tough. Sarah Palin is cutting and running.

The GOP official who was i-chatting with her just before she announced her decision, Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, claims she sees herself as a national figure too big for a backwater like Alaska. Meanwhile, Time's Mark Halperin offers 10 possible reasons:

1. Her political standing has slipped enough that she could have lost a re-election bid if she tried to retain her current office.
2. Her political standing has slipped enough that even if she had run and won, she would have likely been bloodied in the race, maybe even in a primary.
3. Even more ethics complaints (many frivolous) would have been filed against her.
4. She's got a book to write.
5. She's got a special needs baby to raise.
6. It is logistically impossible to run for president as the sitting governor of Alaska-- because of flight times. (Not hard: *impossible*)
7. She couldn't truly explore her money-making potential as an incumbent governor.
8. She couldn't truly explore her media potential as an incumbent governor.
9. The legislature has turned so much against her that the job wasn't much fun any more.
10. If she wants to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2012, she needs to spend more time raising money, establishing her international and national expertise, and traveling the Lower 48. And she needs to start now.

Although Palin has spewn out a dozen excuses and accusations for resigning-- from it's best for Alaska to it's best for our troops-- perhaps the DNC may be more on target than anyone else: she's a fucking fruitcake.

Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can't handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down. Either way-- her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today.

I'm going to bet, though, that we haven't heard the end of this and that in the next few weeks another shoe is going to drop that will make it abundantly clear why Sarah Palin couldn't have remained in the governor's office even if she wanted to.


UPDATE: Sneaky Palin

When Palin met with Alaska's junior senator, Mark Begich (D), a couple days ago, she either hadn't made up her mind to quit yet or she purposely set out to deceive him. Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski (R), no more a friend of Palin than Begich, is in the state, and she was also taken by surprise. And like so many serious Republicans, she is aghast at Palin's dereliction of duty:

A very tough one-sentence statement out Friday night from Alaska's Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose father Sarah Palin knocked off to win the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2006:



"I am deeply disappointed that the Governor has decided to abandon the State and her constituents before her term has concluded," Murkowski said.