While there is undoubtedly an extremist wing of the Republican Party which loves Sarah Palin, she has very little chance of becoming President.  She has already proved to be a liability as a vice Presidential candidate, and would probably do even worse as a Presidential candidate - unless America completely loses it's collective mind by 2012, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but QUITTER gets a higher score than LEADER in Scrabble.

Minty fresh

Sara Palin: The Natalee Holloway for people who "are like, really into politics."

Weird news...not sure what to think of it.  NBC's Andrea Mitchell is reporting that Palin is leaving politics for good.  Palin has posted a cryptic tweet saying "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" - which could mean anything from she's preggers again to she's running in 2012.  Mainstream Republicans seem puzzled and dissapointed with the way this went down - Rich Lowrey on National Review (generally a Palin booster), writes: "Rambling and not at all persuasive as an argument for her decision. More Gibson/Couric than GOP convention speech. She shouldn't have said a thing without getting Matt Scully--or some similarly talented speechwriter--on the case first. As to how this decision plays out ultimately, we'll see. There's plenty of time if (as I assume) she wants to run in 2012, and she obviously has plenty of capital with Republicans. But not an auspicious start."

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

Holy candied caribou, that was one ramblin' wreck of a resignation speech.  She never did divulge why she's stepping down, then told us she has "given my reasons," more than once.  And that MacArthur quote at the end was precious.

I think there's some pictures out there of her and an indigineous Alaskan mammal doing the dirty.  

At any rate, she certainly made sure to intimate very strongly that she's a victim.  Of what, exactly (other than the "liberal microscope" boo fucking hoo) we don't yet know.  But we will.  We will.  (Something involving sled dogs would be a nice twist.)

She's going to host a daytime talk show.

She's done. Now there will always be the echo chamber folks who will back her no matter what for being "mavericky" but the fact is she doesn't appeal to a majority of the nation. What's worse for her is the fact that she probably has strong disapproval numbers that nothing will change.

Leaving in the midst of a term to begin a campaign looks suspicious as hell. See my comment #11, I wonder what she is going to be charged with. Of course, her boosters will say that she's doing this to have more time to prepare for '12 which will make her more successful. To them, I have two words: Tom Vilsack.

Bottles and cans just clap your hands just clap your hands

It looks like our erstwhile governor and VP prospect is planning to sue the intertubes for issuing a collective WTF about her surprise exit.  And this is the person who could have been a defibrillator away from the presidency.

Minty fresh

I took this as a sign that she's realized she is not nor ever has been a viable candidate for national office.  That or an impending indictment or something like that.

The boo-hooing about all the scrutiny is of course ridiculous.  Where was she when her party did the exact same thing to its opponents?

Honestly I really don't care what her reasons are, as long as this isn't a prelude to a bid for 2012, of course.  If that's the case, what this act says to me is that she either can't handle leading a state or that her political career is more important to her than her responsibilities.  We want someone like this in office why?

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

The thing that burns me up about Palin is that she phrases her criticism of her critics in ways that attempt to marginalize them, in ways that are completely implausible. She lies the big lie brashly, and then when she gets called on it she just accuses those people who point it out of unjustly persecuting her. It's like when the Clintons imagined that there was some vast right wing conspiracy against them, but hundreds of times worse. Anyone that critiques her is an out of touch liberal Washington insider (how, I wonder, will she make that charge stick against Mike Huckabee?). She needs to realize that there are people who honestly think that she is unqualified to govern, who honestly think her policy proposals are wrong, who disagree with her in good faith. It's not some big conspiracy to keep Sarah Palin out of office. It's a big conspiracy to keep poorly informed, erratic, unprepared politicians from national office. If she was a liberal white male Democrat from Alaska with the same qualifications and background, I (and, I think, most of her critics) would be equally horrified.

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

Chris Orr proposes an interesting thought experiment:

if I were, say, Mitt Romney, I would be a tad concerned...If one believes, as I do, a) that Palin has every intention of running for president, barring the emergence a scandal that makes this impossible; b) that she will not win the GOP nomination; and c) that the bitter grudge-holding that has characterized her career will continue; she seems an unusually plausible risk to launch a base-shattering third-party candidacy.

It's an interesting thought, although Pat Buchanon had a seemingly similar popularity with the base in the 1990s, but was unable to translate it into any significant impact during his 2000 presidential campaign...

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

Ran into this at another site. Very interesting:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00378

Seems she built a huge house on about a 60K salary while mayor, raised taxes while mayor but left a budget deficit for the town, can't document how the house was paid for and some of the contractors for the house also got contracts for a huge rec center for the town while she was mayor.

Stinks to high heaven of corruption.  

I heard from a reliable source that Sarah Palin is considering a run for the Presidency of Russia.

    The comparisons to Hillary Clinton are fascinating, if you want to think of Palin's run that way. Everybody assumes Palin is running, even though she's being coy about whether that's really going to happen or not. Palin also has a similar problem with the charisma that's allowing her to be considered at all-- the very quality that makes the base enthusiastic also motivates and enervates the opposition. And they both could be considered as trying to shatter a glass ceiling for women: in HRC's case, that of running for president, and in Palin's case the traditional Republican hierarchy when it comes to backing a presidential candidate. The really big question, one that will depend more on her campaign manager rather than Palin herself, is whether there will be a serious effort to convert those crowds we saw in 2008 into an actual multi-state campaign structure. Not having the patience to stick out another year in Alaska does not bode well for this, btw-- there's little to gain by starting more than 18 months out from the election, and there's a serious risk of voter fatigue setting in, especially with those moderates Palin would need to have any chance of beating someone like Romney in the primaries.
    That said, a serious candidacy by Palin in 2011 is probably on Rahm Emanuel's wish list right about now.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras