Sarah Palin to resign as Alaska governor
 

Pass the popcorn, y'all ...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/03/palin/index.html

That's good, I think Alaska being Governed by her is just.. ugh..

What if she had done this before the election?

Hopefully she goes into porn now

I wonder what's going to happen in the next election, there's been more attention to bad Alaskan politicians in recent years. Considering she was an outsider (even though she's lived there awhile) there may be a closing of the ranks for impression management.

My Alma Mater will also have to change the boasting from Alaska's governor, to the first woman governor of Alaska. She was kind of our big alumna we touted for awhile.

There really wasn't much reason to at that point regardless of how 'bad' she looked.

She was more popular than McCain was and Alaskans were still happy but things have changed...articles were printed following the election that she burnt enough bridges to the point that her return to Alaska wasn't going to be a smooth one.

But putting all of this reasoning, wondering and guessing aside, the 800lb gorilla in the room is...WHY?

Why is she resigning?

ETA: Wait....isn't there an ethics investigation going on?

The current prediction that I've heard is that she's gearing up for a Senate run.

Well how does leaving your office in the middle of your current term put a positive spin on running for senate?

If McCain had won the presidency, then yeah, I could see that but right now she just up and quits with no explanation?

No.

Please tell me we have another Republican sex scandal in the making.

Maybe she's having an affair with her daughter's baby daddy. (Sorry, that was in horrible taste.)

I think that's lame.

She said something about "I don't want to be a lame duck politician" or whatever. I think if that's the case, she should get out of politics all-together because at some point in their careers that is what they will all end up being

Political insiders have said that she's getting out of politics altogether. Apparently, the tide turned against her in Alaska as soon as the election was over.

Was this everyone's way to push MJ out of the spotlight for a minute? ;)

But in all seriousness I like her and hope she finds her true calling, since it doesn't appear to be politics.

I just don't get that feeling that the door has closed on the whole story.

To put it into words that we might hear Sarah herself say "I'm thinkin' that we haven't heard the last of this, ya know?"

Say, she hasn't been in Argentina lately, has she?

Kidding! I'm a Republican, but I'm also lukewarm on Gov. Palin.

All reasons she could have left office... :rolleyes: :D

But as has been said, I don't see how resigning will help her run for a more prestigious position later on. If this was her tactic (and maybe she tried to downplay it by breaking the news on a Friday before a holiday weekend), lying about the reason she resigned definitely won't help her gain support in possible future campaigns.

Another argument is that she is becoming increasingly angry/embarrassed/upset by the constant jokes being made about her and her family, and she doesn't want to be in the limelight anymore.

On the flip side of that, others are saying that after being the "star" that she became while being in the public eye, to return to the small state (population-wise) of Alaska was kind of a disappointment.

Whatever the reason, I think her explanation of not wanting to be a lame-duck politician was to conceal the real justification for wanting/needing to resign.

Yes it was.

Anywho, maybe she is tired of having her family members dragged through the mud or the topic of sick inappropriate jokes. That alone has to be hard on anyone male or female, regardless of political affiliation. I believe strongly that is a major reason as to why good folks don't/won't run for public office.

I think political opinion/policy/actions(especially within the last ten years) are fair game for attack of any one running in any election. What I dont agree with is personally attacking family members of a politician, especially if they are children/minors and/or have nothing to do with the development of the political views of their parent's candidacy. That kind of senseless mudslinging alone would make me want to quit, but that is just me.

Yes. That's why I said that it was.


I certainly hope you're not referring to Bristol Palin here, because she absolutely has everything to do with the development of her mother's political views. It is exactly her mother's attitude about abstinence-only sex education which is to blame for the multitude of unwanted teen pregnancies in America every year. Shame on Sarah Palin for not doing her job as a mother and making sure her own daughter didn't get knocked up in high school--and heaps of shame on her for trying to ensure that the teenage girls of her constiuents don't receive the education they deserve regarding the options for preventing pregnancy.

/soapbox

Bristol Palin and her next oldest daughter (who was apparently mistaken for Bristol) were the brunt of tasteless jokes yes.

With regards to abstinence education. Whether someone's parent is for it or against it either way I dont think is too relevant. Sarah is for abstinence education. Okay. Her oldest teenage daughter had premarital sex. Okay. She had an unplanned pregnancy as a result. Okay that happens. Does it make Bristol a bad person because she chose a path different from her mother's and suffered a consequence as a result deserving tasteless comments and jokes? No I dont think so. I may feel differently if Bristol had a sleuth of different partners and/or didnt know the identity of her baby's father (which I saw as a former nurse). I'm not quite getting how the personal decision of her daughter to have premarital sex without parental approval (I am assuming most teens have sex without parental approval/knowledge) make Sarah Palin a bad person worthy of having family members personally attacked in the media. How many of us on here had parents who were no sex until marriage supporters/teachers/believers? Mine were. How many of us agreed or practiced that way of thinking? Did I listen or agree? No. Does that alone make me a bad person worthy of senseless jokes? I dont think so. Did I suffer the consequence of pregnancy as a result of my actions? No, but not all and I suspect a few here are not as lucky, however my husband's first marriage was a result of that consequence. I dont think that makes one's child material for the brunt of jokes. If she was older/more mature and had something to do with Palin's political view/advocacy then maybe okay, but I have not seen evidence of that. Even preacher's/minister's children fall short, make mistakes, and suffer consequences of their actions sometimes, but I wouldnt peg them as incapable of leading their congregations. You deal with it and move on. If one doesnt agree with Sarah Palin's views on premarital sex then by all means attack her views, but dont bring her children into it. That's distasteful.

Amazing...we burned this bridge back in August all the way up thru election day

link

And the thing that annoyed me was that the people talkest the loudest were the liberals. The ones that are supposed to be about privacy and personal rights. It makes me hates politics.

Alright, consider the dead horse beaten.

Funny how nobody thinks it's in poor taste to feature Bristol Palin in the media as long as she's touting her agenda of wanting to be a teen pregnancy prevention advocate; but one suggestive joke and all of a sudden, she's the victim of her mother's limelight? :rolleyes:

Maybe the citizens of Alaska can use Bristol's "sleuth" of partners to solve the mystery of the real reason Sarah's resigning the governorship.

While I wasn't a fan of Sarah Palin or her stand on many views, I don't think it's fair to blame her for her daughter's pregnancy. Plenty of women who believe in birth control education end up with daughters who are pregnant.

The reality (right or wrong .. wrong in my opinion) is that every candidate and their family members are under a microscope once they are running for a major office. You have to be pretty tough to endure that. If that's the reason for her resignation, then she definitely doesn't have a thick enough skin to be in politics.

In many ways, I feel the Republican party did this to her. She wasn't ready to run for an office like Vice President and wasn't familiar with what it really takes to make that run successfully. We'll probably never know why they selected someone who wasn't truly ready.

I still stick with the idea that the GOP wanted to one up the Dems by bringing in an outsider who was a woman.

I think you are right about her having thin skin.

LMAO.

so much for her political career.

She's my first and only GILF.

Yea I totally agree.

I wouldn't want to vote for someone for Senate or *eeeep* President who doesn't even have the gumption to finish her term.

I def. feel her "lame duck" thing was a cop out.

wasn't there a corruption investigation by the Fed that was gaining steam? Maybe it had something to do with that?

Hahahaha!! Hilarious!

Of possible relevance, Levi Johnston is planning to write a tell-all book:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07042009...ues_177489.htm

As flawed as the Palins might be, what a crappy human being to do that to the whole other side of his child's family. What is he doing to his kid there?

As far as Sarah Palin's resignation, I really wonder what she's thinking. The only thing that makes sense is that she entirely intends to drop out of public life, but it's hard for me to really believe that's what she is doing.

For her to have succeeded at any other political level, finishing her term as Gov. really seems required, and I say that as someone who, as I remember it anyway, invested a lot of time defending her on GC. Flaking out now without a REALLY good reason seems to make her unsuitable for other posts.

ETA: I can't find a reputable source with any info on a federal indictment. All the stories seem to say, her resignation may be ahead of a federal indictment related to embezzlement charges that were first reported last summer, without any new information. It seems hard for me to believe that if there were something to the charges that it wouldn't have broken as story during the presidential race.

The fact that she did this on a "news dump" Friday and a holiday weekend, apparently in hopes that the story wouldn't gain too much traction, makes me think a really big shoe is about to drop.

I think that's a reasonable reaction. But the more you think about it, the less logical it really is. (And it could be the Palin camp who isn't thinking that clearly, rather than us.)

If another big story is about to hit, what's the advantage of the news dump now? It's not like there's any way the media is going to say, "oh, Palin was indicted, but she resigned last week, so we're not really going to cover that."

I think any former governor's sudden resignation followed by an indictment would be a big news story in and of itself; add the frisson of anything about Palin turns it into a major thing.

It's funny in that the announcement of her candidacy took place on the Friday of a holiday weekend, and now the announcement of her resignation took place on the Friday of a holiday weekend.

As I told my dad yesterday- what is she going to do? She doesn't exactly have much to fall back on, and her husband doesn't have much of a job (if any)? There's only so long that pro-lifers will pay her to come speak at their dinners before she fades into oblivion.

Did anyone read the Vanity Fair profile about her that came out recently?

I find this even funnier as the University of Idaho recently changed their slogan/tag line to "A Legacy of Leading" * considering her resignation and Larry Craig, it cracks me up. She could pull a Joe the Plumber or Huckabee and use her journalism degree working for Fox. With the amount of investigations and corruption being focused on Alaskan politics the next governor will have to be transparent.

*Previous tag lines included "No Fences: Open Spaces, Open Minds" "From Here You Can Go Anywhere" 'Where Tradition Meets the Future"

As much as I don't like Palin, I think it's really crappy of Levi to write a "tell all" book.

It's painfully obvious that ever since he was thrust into the limelight by Palin's VP nod, he seems pretty determined to never go away. He says he's going into acting. Riiiiight. 'Cause he's so qualified. He's just one of those ppl that is going to jump around yelling "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" for the rest of his life, and it's kinda sad.

On the same note though, if Palin had nothing to hide, there shouldn't be anything to worry about, right? ;)

well I think there was the issue with her sis in law that was being probed

then...the senator that was being ousted

after that, the expenses that she spent on her trip.

I mean I could be wrong, but I do remember those things being brought up while the election was going on

Oh yeah, right, my point wasn't that there were no investigations. My point was that if there was a big investigative shoe to drop, I think we would have heard of it by now. I'm not aware of any ongoing investigation right now and it seems like we would be.

ETA: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,7018263.story

I think you underestimate her appeal with a certain segment of conservatives.

I think she should have finished her term, and I think the resignation hurts her with most. But I think she's got a base that will remain behind her as long as she's around.

Who is worried?

I think a lot of people are really curious why she resigned because it seems to hurt her in achieving what we assumed were her long term goals.

And I think the "worry" kicks in only because a sudden spontaneous resignation in politics usually = horrible revelation. I don't think it has anything to do with her.

By resigning as governor, did she also give up her pension? Pensions for governors are usually pretty generous. Also, I think she'll be able to earn money as a speaker, maybe get a good book deal, maybe be a regular on news entertainment shows.

Her future financial prospects are anything but bleak at this point.

I never said she WAS worried about it, I was just saying, if there is nothing to hide, she shouldn't be because it's really obvious Levi is just wanting attention.