I’ve seen her parents interviewed and they are the salt of the earth. Palin may have been carried away with ambition, but once she realizes that her family is paying too dear a price, problems with her children or a disaffected husband perhaps, she’ll do the right thing and put her family first.
She’s not presidential material by a long long shot, but I just love her moxie.
From what I’ve read though, Todd was pretty into her political career and involved himself in it heavily. I’ve seen no indication that he was frustrated with the family’s exposure, have you?
One possibility is that Palin has decided to go for a 2012 Presidential run and wants to start some serious fund raising. If she’s a Governor in office there must be legal watchdogging on her finances. Being a private citizen frees her from official scrutiny.
Yeah, but by resigning unprompted in the middle of her term? This is, as far as I know, completely unprecedented in politics. She’s got tremendous name recognition and a sort of fundraising/publicity apparatus in place already. Why do anything to provoke commentators to write your political eulogy?
I didn’t say he was a conservative because Republicans voted for him, I said Bush was conservative because conservatives voted for, worked to elect, and lauded him effusively. Conservative!=Republican, though that’s becoming less true every day. In Eisenhower’s day, there was a strong conservative wing of the Republican Party, but he wasn’t really their candidate.
There was a rumor about Palin having an affair with an associate of Todd’s. It was in the Enquirer of course, but on the other hand, the Enquirer broke the Edwards affair story wide open. Still though, I think it’s unlikely.
I vote corruption scandal. Maybe we should start a betting pool.
Speaking from the perspective of the right, I’m delighted. I’ve defended her in the past but always with a sour taste in my mouth. The sooner she leaves the public spotlight the better it will be for the Republicans.
How does her dropping out of the governorship change any pending investigations? Will the authorities just drop it? Can she get out of jail time?
I think that given the amount of time she dedicated her speech to ranting about the opposition wasting millions of taxpayer dollars investigating her, she’s busted.
I agree that her blackmailer (if blackmail is indeed the reason she resigned) wouldn’t necessarily be someone gunning for a huge payout or a lucrative job.
My guess is she finally pissed off the wrong people. She did have a well-publicized history of playing hardball with big oil. I certainly wouldn’t put it past Exxon or any other major oil company to dig up dirt on a hostile politician. And I’m sure there are many other special interest groups who, for whatever reason, just wanted to get her out of the way.
And as you mentioned, there’s also the possibility of a rival wanting her to bow out. Politics, as I’ve seen first-hand, is not a game for the weak of heart, or stomach. I’m sure Alaskan politics, like politics everywhere, has it’s unsavory aspects. But she clearly had no idea how dirty things could get on a national level, as evidenced by how she lashed out at every percieved slight.
Either way, I can’t imagine there were too many people in the state government willing to stand up for her. From what I understand she’s made powerful enemies on both sides of the aisle in the legislature.
And before I watched her speech, I never realized I could have a fondness for seagulls. They certainly know how to squawk “Bullshit! Bullshit!”, don’t they?