Forgetting that she is a complete idiot or a Tea Bagger for a minute, how much of an impact would Sarah Palin quitting as governor of Alaska have on her numbers in either the primary or general election in 2012. I know that for me, had she not quit, the chances of me voting for her would be in the very low single digits and that would be if she were running against a dead head of lettuce and a melting ice cube. But if she can’t hack it as the Alaskan governor, there is a 0.0000000% chance of me voting for her in any election.
She has zero chance of ever becoming POTUS. I’ll be taking the oath of office before she ever does.
She doesn’t really have a shot at the GoP nomination, either. Best she can realistically hope for in the GoP is a chance to play kingmaker and a spot in the administration.
She could end up running as a third party candidate, and by doing so guarantee Obama wins a second term.
The quitter thing should be fatal to her political career. I hereby claim copyright on
“When the going gets tough…Sarah gets going.”
Bumper stickers, coffee mugs, t-shirts, hats, and other crappy merchandise may be licensed for very reasonable rates. 
The people who she appeals to are already well practised in the discipline of cognitive dissonance. They can work around any obstacle you throw at them and will not by swayed by what you know as logic. The rest of us she alienated well before quitting as governor. So I’d say it has exactly zero impact on her chances.
I don’t think it will matter one way or the other. The people who care about it wouldn’t vote for her anyway, and the people who would vote for her don’t care about it. People quit public office all the time and no one ever says a word about it. They quit to spend more time with their families; because family concerns compel them to earn more than they were making in office; to run for other office; or to accept state or federal political appointments. Outrage over Palin’s leaving office is just political bullshit, kind of like Obama’s birth certificate - it’s simply an attempt to exploit what is perceived as a weakness. If she were a Democrat you guys wouldn’t be saying a word about it and the nation’s conservatives would be all up in arms.
I dunno. I think I’d cast a jaundiced eye at anyone who left one political office and then campaigned for another. If there’s one thing I expect from my elected officials it’s a sense of perseverance.
On an unrelated note, why is it that every time I want the word perseverance, perspicacity pops into my head first and won’t leave until I google stick-to-it-ness?
Getting older perhaps? 
Hugh Hefner once admitted to a similar problem and said he thought his mind had become like a crowded attic where things he’s trying to find are often hidden behind boxes of other stuff.
People quit offices, but they usually try to serve out their term, unless quitting is required to take on the new office. What she did was quit when she didn’t have to, and that is worse, in my opinion.
People more often quit appointed positions, but I don’t think the two can be compared. I think that people that are appointed have a job: when someone runs for office, that’s much more a promise to continually look after your constituents’ interests.
People had plenty to say when Eliott Spitzer resigned as governor of New York following a prostitution scandal and when Jim McGreevey of New Jersey resigned following allegations he’d put his boyfriend on the state payroll.
In any case this is a little misleading because she didn’t quit her job for any of those reasons. She quit more or less because she didn’t feel like being governor anymore. If you’re a fan, you can say her opponents were not going to let her accomplish anything and were harrassing her with frivolous complaints; if you’re not a fan, you can say she wanted to cash in with books and TV appearances and that Alaska didn’t have anything else to satisfy her ambitions. If you can find another elected official who resigned for reasons like that, I’m all ears. I’ll be even more interested if you can find one who resigned for those kinds of reasons and then turned around and ran for higher office about a year later. I can think of elected officials who resigned to run for other offices (although when they did that, they admitted it) or because of scandals, and I can think of appointed officials who resigned to run for office or to join the private sector. I don’t think you’ll find it that easy to think up a comparison to this situation.
Her supporters have already painted her quitting as an heroic move. Sarah was being hounded mercilessly by “Liberals”, you see, and fighting the charges would’ve cost the state too much money.
Nothing will sway them.
And yet somehow the liberals are still viewed as being the pussies.
-Joe
Quitting will have zero impact on her chances because she doesn’t plan to follow through with her candidacy in the first place.
She will act like a candidate until a clear front-runner emerges, then back out and throw her support to that person. This way, she can claim that she was solely responsible for allowing the winning candidate to get the nomination. Thus, the dumbshits who support her now will revere her even more, as she’ll clearly be the one calling the shots within the Republican Party. And that’ll sell more books and speaking engagements.
She may an idiot, but she’s not stupid.
And she certainly has media manipulation down to a science. It is pathetic how she has them eating out of her hand. Just really pathetic.
As for quitting, I do not recall a governor resigning for no other reason than to go on a book, speaking and Fox commentator tour. She can couch it in whatever language she wants, but she flat out quit for financial reasons, pure and simple.
Personal reasons are one thing, personal enrichment is another.
Sarah doesn’t want to be president. Sarah wants to stay relevant so she can continue to milk millions of dollars from her moronic supporters.
Wouldn’t this be perfect for a line of enema products?
At the time, my dad was very impressed with her dead-fish impersonation. “She’s obviously resigning to focus more time on preparing for a presidential run! Good for her!” “Uh, Dad, if she were serious about trying to prepare for the Presidency, the single best thing she could have done would be to finish serving out her term as governor.” “Uh… Well…”
It’s not just an issue of winning an election. Palin has to get nominated first. And there will be plenty of conservative Republican competitors who’ll be happy to trash her before she ever has to face a Democrat. They’ll make sure conservative voters get the message that “Palin isn’t tough enough to be President”.
Nah, she’s already the perfect candidate. Any of them who say anything against her are clearly RINOs who are against her people - who are the “real Americans™”.
The woman can quit as governor and it’s a fucking victory in their eyes.
-Joe
I realize you didn’t intend to deceive anybody here, MPB in Salt Lake, but for future reference, please don’t alter text inside the quote boxes.
Nonsense. She quit her sworn office and abandoned her constituency for the most venal of reasons: money. Lots of money. Had she not been picked up by McCain and made a name for herself, she’d have finished out her term and possibly served a second one. She was condemned by all sides of the political spectrum for this move, particularly in Alaska. Quitting because of family matters, etc., is not even in the same ballpark.