Palin to resign as Alaska governor

[Joeychgo]

WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin made a surprise announcement Friday that she will resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, saying she will try to "affect positive change" from outside government.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate hastily called a news conference Friday morning at her home in suburban Wasilla, giving such short notice that only a few reporters actually made it to the announcement.

She said the decision has been "in the works" for a while and comes after "prayer and consideration" and discussions with her family.

She is handing the reins over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will be sworn in at the governor's picnic in Fairbanks on July 26. Parnell and most of Palin's cabinet and Palin's family were at the announcement.

Palin was vague about why exactly she is stepping down rather than finish out her first term, which ends in 2010.

"We know we can affect positive change outside government at this point in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities," she said. She added that she was tired of what she described as "superficial, wasteful, political bloodsport."

Some have speculated in the past that Palin may be interested in running for president in 2012, but she did not mention running for another office at her press conference. Sources told NBC's Andrea Mitchell that this resignation announcement indicates Palin is out of politics for good.

No 'lame duck'
Palin said she didn't want to be a "lame duck" politician.

“Many just accept that lame duck status and they hit the road. They draw a paycheck and they kind of milk it. I’m not going to put Alaskans through that. I promised efficiencies and effectiveness," she said.

Later, on the micro-blogging service Twitter, she promised supporters more details: "We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election ... this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy ... it is good. Stay tuned."

Palin's decision even took Parnell by surprise. He said he was told on Wednesday evening, and was not aware that any presidential ambitions were behind the move.

Palin was elected Alaska's youngest and first woman governor in 2006 at age 42. She emerged from relative obscurity nearly a year ago when she was tapped as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate.

She was only the second woman to appear on a major party presidential ticket — Democrat Geraldine Ferraro was the first when she ran unsuccessfully for vice president with Walter Mondale in 1984.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31726640/ns/politics-more_politics/

 

[Joeychgo]

so, whats really going on here? She quits before the end of her first term?

 

[1bad4.6l]

maybe shes just fed up with all the bs that comes with being in office, mainly her family in the media spotlight. You know when youre in that position the media makes you out to be a monster. Hell if I tried to run for pres or gov they would stone me or 95% of anyone in america. just my thoughts I've never been too political.

 

[LincolnLSE]

She is probably setting herself up to run for the Republican Presidential Nomination in the 2012 election without the burdens of the Governorship hampering things. I don't see her campaign going very far after the way she crippled the McCain ticket...

 

[Mavrick]

I’ll bet it’s a dash for the cash. She’ll soon be coming to a radio or TV near you with some sort of talk show.

 

[Calabrio]

She is probably setting herself up to run for the Republican Presidential Nomination in the 2012 election without the burdens of the Governorship hampering things. I don't see her campaign going very far after the way she crippled the McCain ticket...

You're half right.

She's likely leaving the governorship so that she can position herself before the national audience. It's extremely difficult to do anything resembling campaigning or media when you are busy being governor of Alaska. The distances are just too great. There are only a few months left of her term anyway, and politically, it positions her respected Lt. governor in a strong position to run for "re-election" now too. So you're right on that point.

And she has a great deal of potential as a national figure. She didn't cripple the McCain ticket at all. She was the only bright spot in it. She was the only thing that injected any energy or enthusiasm to the campaign.

 

[LincolnLSE]

And she has a great deal of potential as a national figure. She didn't cripple the McCain ticket at all. She was the only bright spot in it. She was the only thing that injected any energy or enthusiasm to the campaign.

McCain had a decent chance until he added Palin to the ticket. Had he picked a VP who is actually "vice-presidential" in the purest sense of the word, like Mitt Romney or MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, he could have appealed to more moderates. Sarah Palin pushed the ticket too far to the right, added too much bad press, and sealed the election for Obama. Romney would have been the logical choice with his business experience and the state the economy was in at the time.

The "energy and enthusiasm" you reference only lasted for a few weeks, and then turned negative for McCain. Don't get me wrong, I supported the Palin choice at first - I quickly changed my mind after hearing her speak.

 

[Calabrio]

McCain had a decent chance until he added Palin to the ticket. Had he picked a VP who is actually "vice-presidential" in the purest sense of the word, like Mitt Romney or MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, he could have appealed to more moderates. Sarah Palin pushed the ticket too far to the right, added too much bad press, and sealed the election for Obama. Romney would have been the logical choice with his business experience and the state the economy was in at the time.

You're repeating that, and that is the line repeated by the national media.

Romney may have been a strong choice, Pawlnety wouldn't have done anything for the ticket.

The problem with the McCain ticket wasn't that it was "too far right," even after Palin joined that failed campaign.

You also say that she added "too much bad press." Why is that? What bad press did she add, or was it that the media went out of their way to destroy her and paint even the most mundane detail in a sensational and negative fashion?

She has a great story, she has an interesting family- one that most of us can relate too, and she has a tested and demonstrated record of integrity and success. And she's not a beltway politician, nor does she have anything to do with that toxic culture.

She has a tremendous amount of potential.

The "energy and enthusiasm" you reference only lasted for a few weeks, and then turned negative for McCain. Don't get me wrong, I supported the Palin choice at first - I quickly changed my mind after hearing her speak.

No. You heard her speak and were enthused. Her speech at the convention was excellent. She pulled off the speech DESPITE teleprompter failures, a trick even the Messiah has yet to learn. Then you probably heard one of the poorly performed interviews, like the one with Katie Couric or that Charlie Gibbons and his attempt at "gotcha" style questions, like when he asked then defined the "Bush Doctrine" wrong. Subsequent interviews have demonstrated that that she's infinitely better than on those occasions.

She has a great deal of potential. And the only way to harness it and refine it is to get out of Alaska. Travel, speaking, and more media experience are necessary.

 

[Calabrio]

Krauthammer and Palin
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/07/03/krauthammer-and-palin/
posted at 10:04 am on July 3, 2009 by Doctor Zero

I admire Charles Krauthammer and usually agree with his take on the issues of the day, but I disagree with his recent dismissal of Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for 2012. It’s far too early in the game to declare anyone either out of the running or inevitable… well, except for you-know-who. As Allahpundit aptly noted, Krauthammer’s statement that “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency” is so powerfully contradicted by recent history as to be surreal. It would be a more defensible statement if he’d clarified it by adding “… without the enthusiastic support of the entire mainstream media apparatus, which Palin is definitely not going to have.” I don’t think that’s what he meant to say, however… and there lies the key to understanding his views on Palin.

Charles Krauthammer is a brilliant writer, and a very perceptive analyst. He’s also a denizen of the Beltway, which inevitably alters his perceptions. He lives and works at the very heart of the machinery of the superstate. If you’ve never been to Washington D.C., I highly recommend making the trip someday. Besides the wonderful sightseeing opportunities and museums, you’ll also gain a sense of how much pure power hums in the air, radiating from the massive government buildings, and refined by the monuments to great moments in our nation’s history. Washington has a sense of both age and modernity. You can see both the past and the future from the Mall.

Some would say that living inside the Beltway tends to make one turn into a liberal, but it’s more accurate to say that the Beltway lifestyle brings a greater appreciation of the power of government. Every Beltway pundit, including Krauthammer, sees the ideal political candidate as a brilliant technocrat, combining charisma with a vast knowledge of history, economics, and the minute workings of Washington. The ideal leader has the intelligence and vision to steer the nation into the best of all possible futures, and Washington is the helm of the American ship, with the ship’s wheel planted firmly in the Oval Office. The primary point of disagreement among Beltway pundits is the precise course we should be setting for the mighty central government. Few of them agree with the conservatives out in flyover country, who think we should be heading for the lifeboats.

If the ideal candidate for mastering the U.S.S. Federal Leviathan is not available, the Washington and New York elite will happily manufacture him, provided they can find someone who gives them suitable raw material… and flatters their intellectual vanity. The liberal dominance of the Beltway media grants liberal candidates the proper credentials, merely by virtue of their being liberal. All that is necessary is for the candidate to have attended a few of the right schools, to allow the pundits to proclaim him a gifted intellectual. Thus, an undistinguished junior senator from Chicago, with a wafer-thin resume, mediocre academic career, spotty attendance in the Senate, and shadowy past associations was magically transformed into a “brilliant community organizer” and awarded presidential stature. In fact, the award was most loudly bestowed by his putative opponent, John McCain. Meanwhile, the equally young and charismatic governor of Alaska is dismissed with a snort and wave of the hand, because she didn’t go the right schools, and doesn’t have a stack of detailed five-year plans for the U.S. Economy.

Krauthammer is no liberal, but he shares the common Beltway vision of the President as a super-genius micro-manager, the CEO of America, Inc. He doesn’t see Sarah Palin as a serious candidate, because if she does decide to run, she won’t be applying for the position he has in mind for her. He parts company with red-state conservatives, because we don’t think our President should be expected to be a human super-computer, with every aspect of a three trillion dollar economy routed through her sleepless intellect. Searching for such candidates is a fool’s game, and building a gigantic centralized government that can only function with such a person at the helm is a recipe for unending disaster. The desperate longing for such a Technocrat-In-Chief makes the media elite highly vulnerable to being conned by anyone who can brandish the right diploma and make it clear he has big plans for the office. He doesn’t even need to present any detailed plans – Obama certainly did not. He only has to convince the elite that he has those plans rattling around in his gigantic, policy-wonk brain. Add a dash of heroic narrative, and you’re all set: Obama is the First! Black! President! John Kerry was a super soldier in Vietnam! Bill Clinton was The Man From Hope! Even the most ridiculous fraud of a candidate can be taken seriously, if he pretends to be what the Beltway elite are looking for.

I think the unfolding events of the Obama presidency will continue to validate the views of we who write from flyover country. The Beltway romance with the Wilsonian ideal of the professor President, acting as an elected philosopher-king to solve all of the nation’s problems from his Washington palace, is increasingly divorced from reality. Like all romances, this one tends to blind the smitten party from seeing the unpleasant truth. America does not need kings, and they are no more acceptable because their palace is granted with the consent of the voters, with a maximum lease of eight years. The colossal failure of a titan with Big Ideas may be a thrilling narrative for Beltway pundits to chronicle, but those of us who have to live through the fiery carnage are tired of clutching our wallets and waiting for the next titan to take center stage.

Krauthammer’s practical advice to Sarah Palin is quite reasonable: study up on the issues she felt uncomfortable with last year. He’s not entirely correct when he says “she has to stop speaking in cliches and platitudes… it won’t work.” It would work, if her desire was to seize that huge ship’s wheel in the Oval Office, and tack just a few points to the right. I can only hope that if she does run, she has the kind of bold conservative vision that will make her campaign an epic battle, against the people who think the Presidency is the kind of job Barack Obama is qualified for.

 

[fossten]

Palin plans to be a freelance Obama-sniper. She can do that more effectively if she isn't holding public office in the meantime. Remember, she's the Barracuda and she doesn't take kindly to her children being attacked. She's going to go after Obama in a series of speeches and headlines over the next few years.

Will be a breath of fresh air to see a Republican show some balls for a change. How ironic that it takes a woman to do it.

 

[shagdrum]

Palin plans to be a freelance Obama-sniper. She can do that more effectively if she isn't holding public office in the meantime. Remember, she's the Barracuda and she doesn't take kindly to her children being attacked. She's going to go after Obama in a series of speeches and headlines over the next few years.

Will be a breath of fresh air to see a Republican show some balls for a change. How ironic that it takes a woman to do it.

Do you have some evidence/links that support that idea? I would be interested in reading about it.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I got thisfrom another forum.

Did an embezzlement scandal force Sarah Palin to resign?

Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home:

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today
Bob

 

[Joeychgo]

Will be a breath of fresh air to see a Republican show some balls for a change. How ironic that it takes a woman to do it.

Like.... Quit halfway through her term? Please.

 

[mespock]

That can't be true she's to squeaky clean and honest for anything like that Bob. That's just some leftest smear campaign to tarnish her great image.

 

[Calabrio]

That can't be true she's to squeaky clean and honest for anything like that Bob. That's just some leftest smear campaign to tarnish her great image.

Are you implying that she's not clean or honest?
Care to explain why? I've seen nothing so far to support any such claim or inference. Everything has been to the contrary.

I've read the Blumenthal story that Bob referenced. Did you? The charge doesn't even rise to the level of speculation. The Daily Beast is a tabloid, but I wouldn't be surprised if MSNBC or CBS run with the rumor as well.

here's another story at the Daily Beast-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-04/how-her-mind-works/
It was penned by the guy who helped coach her for the Biden debate.

YOU might not recognize it, but the political strategists on the left do. Palin is a HUGE threat to them. She is a smart, attractive, successful family woman who doesn't embrace or associate with the beltway types in D.C. She's connects with her audience on a personal level. She's smart and tough. Though, right now, she's still a little green.

Once she leaves Alaskan governorship, she'll have that ability to grow.
People seem to forget she was thrust into the VP candidate slot with virtually no notice and no preparation. And then, immediately upon having the national spotlight, the media, the democrats, and the beltway Republicans started targeting her.

It's been almost nine months since the election and the national media is STILL attacking her. The relentless, partisan hunts and political attacks are making effective governing nearly impossible for her. And remaining in that office, with her hands tied, limits her ability to both defend herself, fight back, and grow as a national figure.

So, if you have a reason to imply that she's dirty, speak up.
In the meantime, care to talk about Tony Rezko?


Didn't think so.

 

[Calabrio]

Like.... Quit halfway through her term? Please.

She took office in Dec, 2006.
She's resigning on July 26, 2009.
The next election is Nov, 2010.

What was your point?
Are you saying that her decision to step-down indicates a "lack of balls?"
If so, why?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I sure hope she has 2012 on her mind.
Even if she should decide to campaign, she has a toiugh road ahead of her to convince many that she can stay ahead of Romney.
I really think he will be the one too beat.
Somehow, I don't see her accepting the second slot on any ticket this time around.
She was green as grass when asked to join the McCain ticket, but now the media has seasoned her and she will prove to be a tough cookie.
Just look at how she handled that dopey pinhead Dave Lettertmen.
She isn't going to sit back and take any of the crap the media will throw at her.
She is a tough cookie,and I think she will give it all she's got.
Bob.

 

[shagdrum]

Still, this action does open her up to the attack of "dereliction of duty" and/or "lacking a tough enough skin" or "lacking follow through". I wonder if she had simply had enough of the vindictive, dishonest leftist smears against her and her family and decided to leave the spotlight for that reason...

 

[fossten]

Do you have some evidence/links that support that idea? I would be interested in reading about it.

Mary Matalin's opinion:

MATALIN: Well, I think it’s really brilliant, with two caveats, one being that there’s nothing else, ala the Sanford fiasco. There’s nothing else that we don’t know. If all that’s there is what we see right now, it’s brilliant.
And, secondly, that she has a plan and people have a plan to put up with the conventional wisdom, chatterati and the political class saying how stupid it is, because it’s brilliant.
On the substance, there’s the key economic issue — I know everyone says — thinks it’s health care, but it’s really energy. And she’s the queen of energy.
And the second big issue for 2012 will be the role of government. And she has a record of reform and ethics reform and making government smaller and reigning in spending — all those issues that are getting increasingly important as Barack Obama expands on his agenda.
So — and her delivery was incredible — a charis — a less charismatic person probably couldn’t pull it off. But as — as already referenced, she will be freed up and liberated in the way Mitt Romney is here to run around and raise money and get political chips by spending it and get political capital. And she is still raising the kinds of crowds and money that she always did.

 

[fossten]

Like.... Quit halfway through her term? Please.

At least she made it halfway.

When did your boy Obama start running for President?

 

[hrmwrm]

Still, this action does open her up to the attack of "dereliction of duty" and/or "lacking a tough enough skin" or "lacking follow through".

that's most likely what will happen.
so what is she, the final great white hope for conservatives?

 

[Calabrio]

that's most likely what will happen.
so what is she, the final great white hope for conservatives?

No, she's a compelling, gifted, and dynamic figure that isn't part of the toxic culture of D.C. who has the ability to appeal to large numbers of people, inspire, and fight- even if it's against those in her own party.

But she's not the "final" anything. Any such impression is merely the framework that he Demcorats and the media are trying to present.

Who was the "final, great white hope for marxists" back in 2001?

 

[hrmwrm]

yes, the dreaded media are always to blame. it's a conspiracy.
i think the conservative movement could do better.

 

[MonsterMark]

..

 

[Calabrio]

The FBI has apparently issued a statement confirming that Palin IS NOT under investigation and that there is no investigation pending.

Palin's attorney's have also expressed how they intend to pursue legal avenues against any media that continues this completely false and totally unsubstantiated story, in order to prevent this kind of libel. I guess the false rumor is associated with a liberal named Shannyn Moore, who frequently blogs for the Huffington Post webpage and... believe it or not... is a frequent guest on Keith Olberman's little show.