(Photo by AP/Courtesy of telegraph.co.uk)
With only the Tour de' France, mid-season baseball, and hot-dog eating contests being the major sports viewing interests these days (although Joey Chestnut is a beast, go USA!), I feel I should write about something else that has caught my eyes and ears, the recent mysterious resignation of soon-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Last Friday Palin dropped the surprising news that she would not finish her 4-year term as Alaska's Governor with 1 1/2 years left on the table. After blaming the mainstream media for giving her sensational attention and attacking her family, Palin recently threatened to sue such media outlets for publication of investigation rumors. This did not stop Palin from gladly inviting three major TV media outlets to her family's remote shoreline fishing ranch in western Alaska to talk about the reasons she stepped down as Governor, one of which being the news corporations she was talking to. Even GOP party leaders found themselves dumbfounded. Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee said the resignation, "Simply doesn't make sense in a conventional political setting." Even former Bush political consulter Karl Rove said Palin has engaged in a "risky strategy".
During Palin's interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell at her families fishing ranch, Palin told Mitchell, "My focus is on my state still and it always will be", even though Palin jolted her state to appear on the national stage with Sen. John McCain in the 08' Presidential campaign as his running-mate, returning months later to Alaska where she half a year later decided to forgo the rest of her term. When asked to explain her shocking resignation Palin replied, "I knew I wasn't going to run for re-election, I knew that everything changed on August 29th in Politics in Alaska." She also later explained that she wanted to be straightforward with Alaskans and "not wanting to play that political game that most politicians do." She explained she knew she wasn't going to run again and apparently was happy with her 2 1/2-year term as governor. I guess she wasn't playing the "political game" and was sure she wasn't going to run again for governor, but yet isn't playing the political game about a presidential run in 2012? She also said it was costing the state of Alaska millions of dollars in resources for her to continue her governorship. If Sarah Palin was so concerned for her state, she shouldn't have gone off to the national stage to attempt to be vice president. All of these ethics complaints she is mentioning, frivolous or not, did not come up until after she returned to Alaska. If she thinks ethics complaints are bad wait until she steps onto the national stage if she were to decide to run in 2012. As a US Governor her job is to continue to introduce legislation and make hard decisions and continue to be a "fighter". Palin can't quit in the middle of a term, she would be pulling a reverse Mark Sanford, resigning without doing anything devastatingly bad. This decision is not based on the best interests of the people of Alaska and her family, it is solely based on the interests of her family assuming she wasn't a lame-duck governor, oh wait thats what she called herself to make it seem Alaska would be better off without her being in office. Apparently she wasn't a lame duck governor on the campaign trail. These aren't media distortions these are words coming out of her mouth to reporters some of which she invited to her fishing ranch. If Palin wanted the media to be sure of what she was talking about, maybe she should have been prepared for questions reporters were going to ask. Instead she was lazy, she just simply was not prepared for what the media was going to throw at her. She was politically ignorant under her own control and tried to blame the media for distorting her words to cover up her ill-preparedness.
While Palin said that her political future is open and, "doesn't know what the future holds", GOP Chairman Michael Steele had a different view saying, "Not having talked to the governor, I take 2012 off the table right now simply because given everything she's going through personally, dealing with the financial mess that all these ludicrous investigations have put her and Todd in, at the moment, I think she's trying to focus on getting her house in order, her personal house in order,"... Oops, looks like the decision was now made by Steele. Whatever decision Palin makes for a 2012 run, the decision has already been made. If Sarah Palin thinks she can take on an incumbent candidate and attack his policy, or whatever else she will desperately resort to attack, during a campaign run to be president, there is no way she can go through it without receiving overwhelming backlash from any campaign whether it be GOP candidates during the Primaries or from the Obama campaign if she was miraculously nominated as the Republican candidate. 2012 was taken off the table when Palin announced her resignation as Alaska's governor. Anyone who doesn't think that, I am open for bets, hit me up, Ill give the point spread of 40 percentage points of Republicans who think Palin hurt her 2012 chances by resigning.
