It is possible that Sarah Palin was both unfairly mistreated and personally attacked by the media and many on the left, and that her family was rather ruthlessly and mercilessly run through the ringer … and that she’s a not particularly bright, not particularly curious, once libertarian-leaning governor who sadly devolved into a predictable, buzzword spouting culture warrior when she was prematurely picked for national office by John McCain.

These two scenarios can coexist.

And I bet you never did either.

Normally, I would put your last comment down to a simple mistake. But I have found you to be intelligent, well read, and usually logical. That is why I must think you are being disingenuous. I refuse to believe you are impaired.

I thought Obama would be bad but not this bad. If he had a choice he has invariable made the bad choice, The only good choices were some of the Bush choices on security, to the dismay of the left.

I thought the excess under Bush, like parts of the Patriot act would be pulled back but Obam likes allthose also. So we did not get any of the minor benefits of liberals and all the excess of the marxists.

Palin is a libertarian who practices her own brand of Christianity but she does not push that on others. It is surprtising that so many can not get that.

I saw nothing in Palin that threatened my rights. She may have not been the best experienced and knowledgable politician but she could learn. I saw she had greater potential than McCain, Hillary or Biden and Obama was just an obvious communist. I was surpised that so many saw but refused to believe the evidence of his mindset.

I really think that Palin reignation breaks the idea that one has to stay in office once you have accomplished what you set up to do. After all she has her chosen sucessor to follow up on the agenda.

If she chooses to run in 2012 I think this will not hurt her that much. Those who were against her will stay that way. She has time to win over the middle and learn how to run a national campaign.

Straigtarrow is correct in his analysis. If she manages to get enough conservatives elecetd in 2010 and she explicitly said of either party. She will have earned a lot of IOU’s.

I don’t care to put Republicans in office who will not respect my rights. You can play the “Democrat Bogeyman” card all you want, but it doesn’t work on me. I think McCain would have been a disaster (a mitigated one, but still a disaster) however compared to Obama, it wouldn’t have been *this* bad. I thought he might have a slim chance, so I voted against Teleprompter Jesus. Had I thought he was going to lose, I’d have given my vote to some random 3rd party candidate.

It’s sad you think I need to march in lockstep in order to simply put RINOs into office. It seems to be a pretty common attitude amongst Republicans (which I am not a member of, by the way).

How’s that working out for you so far? Helping you win anything?

If she is going to run, she needs more national exposure. Amongst the several things she must do to get that exposure is to spend more time in the contiguous 48 states. Had she stayed in office, she could not have achieved that exposure without recriminations in the media about how she was derelict in her duty to Alaska. If she had served out her term, she would have suffered an insurmountable loss of time in her pre-campaign campaign, not to mention the shorter time to gather a financial warchest.

The charges of “quitter” can be more easily defended than can the dereliction of duty charges. Especially so since she is leaving with all the bases covered, and has the talking points of how she had become ineffective in her role as governor due to media coverage and democrat funded and supported charges of corruption, which though disproven, could have been levied against her continuously, thus blunting any attempt she might have made at gaining national recognition and campaign contrbutions. Now, she has placed herself outside the arena of those purely political attactks whose sole purpose was to destroy her political persona. The dems and other repubs are that afraid of her. Plus she has the opportunity to play the victim of unjust vilification who resigned out of duty to and love of Alaska.

As for all the so-called political analysts who have stated she just committed political suicide, I would remind them of the press conference at which a future president of the United States said “You won’t have
Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.” We all know how that ruined his chances at the presidency, don’t we?

Wait for it. We don’t need to argue about it now. In just a couple of years we will see if I am right.

edia about how she was

[/snark], for those who are unclear on the concept.

Palin was better than the alternatives to already be found in the Republican ranks, but that honestly is not saying a whole lot. Until the Republicans figure out that being “Liberal-Lites” does not work, they will continue to have their asses handed to them.

With friends like you who needs enemies?

“Because the Republicans have fielded MUCH more conservative and libertarian leaning candidates over the years.”

Really? Like McCain?

Sorry but until very recently any conservative or libertarian minded candidates got sent to the back of the bus.

1. give people who don’t like her more stuff to pile on.
2. give people who like her more reasons to support her (outside the normal).
3. result in people choosing the least evil politician on the ballot.

How *any* of these three are *any* different from *any* election in the history of mankind is a mystery to me.

A third party attractive to a conservative/libertarian (snall l) base is, naturally, going to draw away support from Rebublican candidates, which is generally bad- vis-a-vis 2 Clinton terms, although Dole wasn’t a Bright Shining Star. A third party with liberal/”progressive” appeal won’t draw as many Democrats, respectively, as nobody but moonbats, Greenies and the intellectually challenged will go that way, and while that’ll deplete the ranks of solid Democrat voters, they’ll always call a seance and find more ballots to cast to make up the difference.

As disappointed as I am in the past direction and leadership of the Republican party, and in a lot of their actions and statements since November, I’m not ready to bolt from their ranks wholesale. I’m making myself plain in my letters, emails, and phone calls, to be sure, and I’m using small, easily understood words generally understandable to staffers with a 4th grade education. Statements such as “Don’t vote for cap-and-trade if you expect to have any donations/support/votes from ‘my people’, and “Kay, you voted for the Americorps Bill WHY? That’s not smart for someone who wants to run for Governor against the longest sitting incumbent Texas Governor, sweetie”.

Granted, I think the Republicans need a good bitchslap to wake them up, since they largely haven’t figured it out since November and seen the conservative light. Maybe these Tea Parties can serve as a ‘come to Jesus’ moment for them, even though our local Dallas Morning Pravda downplays the 37,000 who attended the Southfork event Saturday. There’s a lot of people out here who are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it, but if they (we) can redirect the formerly conservative party with the big elephant back on task, it would be a lot better for both groups.

Regards,
Rabbit.

The same “Republican handlers” who facilitated the 2006 and 2008 disasters are now the ones who are maligning Palin.

But Sarah isn’t done – not by a long shot.

Bill Clinton pledged that he would not run for President in 1992 as part of his 1990 campaign for Arkansas governor.

He then repudiated that pledge and got nothing more than an approving nod and wink from the media.

After she leaves the governor’s mansion at the end of the month, Sarah will ubiquitous at Republican campaigns and events.

She is still the Republican to beat in 2012.

She has her own synergy and momentum.

Heck, I wouldn’t even consider voting for Romney or many of the other crop of Lilliputian Republican hopefuls.

They make me sick, and I want nothing to do with them.

But back on topic. One of the wild theories I heard this morning was that she may seek to turn the “Tea Party movement” into a formal Tea Party and run as a 3rd party canditate.

and the guy in question wasn’t all that close an associate.

About as close as Palin’s involvement in the Alaska secessionist movement that we always heard about.

What bothers me the most is the fact that the people who were supposed to be her “handlers” in the McCain campaign are all former Romney people. After Romney fizzled they all got hired by McCain who then pushed them onto Palin. Who they then completely screwed over and have been screwing over ever since.

I can’t help but think they were doing their very best to damage Palin because they recognized her popularity and that Romney would have a very difficult time opposing her -unless- they laid down the ground work first.

I think this previous election shows how far our country has come towards racial equality (or racial guilt) and how little we’ve come in sexual equality. It’s a lot easier being sexist in this country than a racist

Sounds just like something a woman would say…

Sebastian, I can quote, just from today, at least ten phrases I’ve uttered that would probably prevent me from holding an office. I know that in stressful situations, especially those where you have to watch every last word because of a fear of it being parsed wrong, your brain can just dump everything it knows to be true.

Nothing Palin has ever said has not been matched in stupidity from every other politician I’ve ever bothered to listen to. Obama is only coherent with a teleprompter. Biden is a gaffe machine. Bush’s primary language wasn’t English.

The difference it how strong people latched onto those errors and refused to think of her in any other capacity. I had one guy here who the ONLY response to ANYTHING regarding Palin was “She can see Russia, right?”. Didn’t matter if we were discussing policy or whatnot, he refused to think of her beyond that.

But don’t bring up Obama’s 57 states (which was nothing more than a misspoken phrase).

She might just not want this anymore. I don’t see why that’s all that hard to believe.

I seem to remember an icon on this blog at one time

look above the search bar.

However, quitting is bad and a no win situation. If she is planning on running for something else, she’ll be labeled as someone you can’t trust to stick through to the end. If she’s done with politics (and I could honestly understand why), then that just informs the rabidly insane that the best way to railroad through policies is to smear those you dislike so much that they quit.

No sane person wants to go through the shit that woman has had to put up with. It’s the main reason I won’t go into politics – I love my family too much not to start picking off the bastards at long ranges.

Personally, even though I like what she stands for, I think she’s done in any kind of national politics. I can’t imagine defending her decision to leave…no matter how much I might understand it…right when things are at their worst.