The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground, Barack Obama – Tried and failed.
Peace Through Strength, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater – Tried and succeeded.
Glad to see our President is, once again, in denial of history.Forgive the “all Sarah, all the time” coverage for the moment. I think this will be the last post. Please also forgive me repeating myself from a few of my other posts. But I was going to write this as a comment on a few different blogs, and to save time and energy, I’m just putting it all down here.
Many people have called her resignation crazy. Others have called it brilliant. The links are just two examples. I’m sure you can find plenty more. But both camps are wrong. It’s neither the brilliant choice, nor the crazy choice. It was her only choice.
First, two assumptions. Neither of which are guaranteed by any means.
I guess there’s a third implicit assumption as well, that she has designs upon higher office.
If we take these as a given, then how could Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) achieve her goals? Let’s look at the obstacles first.
First, her term ends in December 2010. That may be too late to be starting to ramp up a campaign for the White House in 2012. In her case, it’s almost certainly too late. That’s sad, but it’s true. Especially given that she will have a harder time finding quality staff than some would. There’s a lot of resentment towards her from the party elite. And, given that the ankle-biters in AK have made it apparent that they will dog her every move and try to slap an “ethics violation” on it, she can’t really campaign before her term ends. Particularly when any trip she makes to the “lower 48” is guaranteed to be at least an overnight stay. One only needs to look at some of the 15 dismissed “ethics charges” to know that they will seize upon anything, no matter how small, to attempt to bring her down.
Second, and another reason why end of 2010 is too late for her to start, is that currently she is being defined by the likes of Maureen Dowd and David Letterman. As Governor of AK, there’s little she can do to define herself. Once again, she can’t go around the country making speeches. The wonderful people in AK aren’t going to let her. Any political consultant will tell you that when you’re being defined by your enemies, you’re going to lose. Every time.
Third, she really does care for the initiatives she’s set in motion in AK. And she really does loathe the “good ole boys” network there. She ran against and has actively worked against the corruption of the Murkowskis and their accomplices. Lt. Governor Sean Parnell (R-AK) seems like he will continue her work and continue to move her agenda forward, but he can’t do that if he’s not in office. Running as an incumbent gives him a big leg up in the near certain Republican AK primary, and a leg up in the general election as well.
Given these points, her options were severely limited. The first point makes it a given that at the very least, she should not seek re-election. The second point tells us that even leaving office early would be a good idea. The third point tells us that she should leave early enough to give Parnell time to have a legislative session under his belt which will allow him to actually be seen as an incumbent. Given that, she pretty much has to step down by this fall at the latest. And, once you’ve gone though all this thought process, and reached that conclusion, the next logical conclusion is “why wait any longer?”
Is it unconventional? Certainly. That doesn’t make it either crazy or brilliant though. The situation makes it necessity. But then, “necessity is the mother of invention” (Plato—wow,. I always thought it was Ben Franklin).
Is it high risk? Certainly. That doesn’t mean it’s crazy, though. As Admiral Adama says, “sometimes you have to roll the hard six".
One of the many things discussed on Friday about Governor Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) surprise resignation from the governorship of AK was the timing. News media members of every persuasion reminded us that this was being released on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend, and that it had been “rushed together too fast” for the national media to be there.
The reason for this is that they wanted to bury the news in a “slow news cycle”, and that it was bad news. This fed the “other shoe about to drop” speculation as well.
Except the narrative doesn’t fit the events, does it? Not that such a thing has ever stopped the news media before, but it bears further investigation in this case.
Lt. Governor Sean Parnell (R-AK) says that Palin informed him of her decision on Wednesday. He doesn’t say when, but even if it was very late, that still gave the Palin team over 36 hours to set up a press event. So, it wasn’t rushed, and it wasn’t that there wasn’t time to get the media there. They weren’t wanted.
Ok, they weren’t wanted. That’s ok, that still fits part of the narrative that this was bad news and Palin wanted to bury the news on the Friday of a holiday weekend.
Except that didn’t happen. It was the most talked about thing on the internet this weekend and on all major networks. It pushed Michael Jackson and Mark Sanford totally off the map.
Palin’s often accused (wrongly) of not being very bright, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this kind of reaction was inevitable. Everything Palin does is news. No matter what day and time it occurs on.
So, what if Palin knew it would be big news, and actually wanted it released on Friday of a holiday weekend so that she’d be the only story? Is that too far-fetched to believe? But then she’d want the national media there, right? I can’t have it both ways, after all.
Wrong. I can.
This was a deliberate thumbing-of-the-nose at the national media that thinks so highly of itself. It was a giant one-fingered salute to CNN, ABC, MSNBC, et al. It was quite simply a way of saying, “I’m sick of you defining me. I’m going to define myself. Without you. This is the age of the internet. I don’t need you anymore.”
President Barack Obama (D-USA) is often (correctly) credited with having an incredibly internet savvy campaign, the first person to have really done so. Sarah Palin on Friday may have taken this to a whole new level. We may be simultaneously witnessing the birth of the first true internet politician, and the death of main-stream media as a controlling influence.
At Reclusive Leftist (yes, she’s a feminist on the left). It’s long, but read the whole thing. An excerpt (emphasis mine):
But even weirder is what happens when you try to replace the myths with the truth. If you explain, “no, she didn’t charge rape victims,” your feminist interlocutor will come back with something else: “she’s abstinence-only!” No, you say, she’s not; and then the person comes back with, “she’s a creationist!” and so on. “She’s an uneducated moron!” Actually, Sarah Palin is not dumb at all, and based on her interviews and comments, I’d say she has a greater knowledge of evolution, global warming, and the Wisconsin glaciation in Alaska than the average citizen.
But after you’ve had a few of these myth-dispelling conversations, you start to realize that it doesn’t matter. These people don’t hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate.
