“This is not a retreat. It’s an advance in another direction.” Oh boy.
This announcement was thrown together awful fast. She’s talking about investigations and packing her bags in a hurry, so maybe she’ll wind up in Brazil. Even if not, at least now she can’t ever be president. You can’t see it happening even if you’re a paranoid liberal pothead with a science fiction bent. She is now a quitter and a flake. That will be the view of anyone who’s not a wingnut and of some who are. Two and 1/2 years as gov.
My guess is she wants to make money as a celebrity, especially since she needs money for legal fees (because of the ethics complaints). [update, I also find it tempting to think that she thinks she can make pres by the celebrity route, that she believes her personal wonderfulness is only being hampered and obscured by office and its headaches, that she thinks now she can blaze her way to the top by being glorious full-time in the media.]
[second update, Marc Ambinder wrote this: “Palin, in Alaska, is a sitting duck for the people and forces she believes are ruining the country. She can’t fight back — she can’t protect her family, her values, her worldview — while she’s governor.” I think that’s meant to be her view, not his. Even so, I don’t get it. How does being governor make her a sitting duck? People don’t make fun of her for what she does as governor, not unless they are actually in Alaska. The rest of us don’t know enough to say. We make fun of her for her ignorance and sleazy behavior. Ambinder goes on to argue that the real deal here is that she hasn’t done well as governor and is fed up with being chivvied and hassled by the other Alaska politicians. He implies that going national full time looks a lot better to her because that line of approach is all about showing off and making speeches, not delivering governmental results. Sounds very plausible to me; I do gravitate toward the “bright lights, big city” explanation for her flakeout. Still leaves us wondering why she had to throw her announcement together so precipitately.]
When she comes to Alaska, everyone calls her “Sarah.” Out there she’s governor–almost president-elect. She’s not Sarah. They introduce her with pomp and circumstance. Build her ego up, do that whole thing. Here, she comes back, she runs into a buch of Alaskans. It’s humbling. It’s nothing big to us. They don’t mind calling you on the carpet. It’s nothing special. She’s just one of us. But she decided she wasn’t going to be one of us…
Sarah’s uppity!]
I just heard about the resignation this afternoon, since I’m staying off the Internet (kind of). Griffy Flatts, my building’s excitable janitor, gave me the news. He watches CNN a lot and is obsessed by US politics. He gave me an earful about the resignation and the relevant clip, which he said showed her emotional and incoherent — “babbling.” Hah, no. Her voice shook here and there, but she delivered a good performance and pursued a more-or-less consistent rhetorical thread in her remarks. They were confusing only because she was talking thru her hat. No emotional free associating, just really extreme fancy dancing: human-growth psychobabble to reframe her decision to quit, murky references to political operatives targeting her after she got on the McCain ticket. passing the ball when the other side has you in its sights (doesn’t say who the other side is).
Says now the state won’t have to pay for pursuing all the ethics complaints against her? for the time she spends on payroll defending against the complaints? Kind of missed that bit, but she’s saving Alaska money by stepping down while all these ethics complaints are pending against her, and she’s saving the state more money by quitting instead of just serving out her term as a lameduck. Lameducks go on junkets a lot, and she doesn’t want to let herself do that.
What was that she said about one complaint being about her holding a fish? From what seed of truth has she spun this mutant?