AkSteveB

I’m into conservative standards of governance, and far as I can tell Governor Palin has been a C level politician at best. This latest move to resign office after only 30 months has lowered that grade a bunch.

If the elections of 06 and 08 and the national nightmare of Obama is telling us nothing, it’s people are looking for competent managers of government. I don’t see how anyone who looks realistically at how Governor Palin not only governed Alaska or has chosen to leave her office can be impressed if you think competent conservative governance is important.

I wish the Governor and her family all the best in the future. May her book sell well, may FOX offer her a big contract to appear as a talking head, may she make a bundle out on the public speaking trail, all the best should come her and her families way. But please, don’t tell me that competent conservative management of government is personified in Governor Sarah Palin, it’s just unbelievable.

Preferably an aged vintage. Unfortunately Neil has already zapped a couple of obnoxious ‘bots, but Gary is still here and there is always drkven who’s comparing Palin to von Stauffenberg.

Good writeup and we’ll see if this turns into chum for the little fish.

the really sad, sorry state of conservative leadership in this era. So many people were so hungry to believe that there was someone out there who could lead them that they glommed onto a woman who was willing to articulate their desires.

In much the same way that the left attached all their aspirations to Obama for much the same reasons.

Myself, I would have been happy to vote for her, even with her flaws, but with the knowledge that she is just a politician, and rarely, do you get a person of real stature who can create real change.

I am not expecting a new Ronald Reagan anytime soon. But I would settle for a Calvin Coolidge.

McCain used her. She wasn’t ready for prime time and he knew it. Staff started leaking stuff about her ..DURING THE ELECTION. You just don’t do that. I can’t think of another national candidate backstabbed by staff before voting day.

I think McCain selected her to shore up conservative support, as he realized that too many were going to sit out the election otherwise. He wanted to shore up his right flank without him having to embrace conservatism himself more than giving lip service.

What I think really spooked McCain and his staff, though, was - ironically - Sarah’s convention speech. Suddenly they had a celebrity on their hands who was articulate and able to connect with voters, and who totally upstaged McCain. Suddenly the tail was wagging the dog in that the McCain campaign image was being defined by Sarah the conservative rather than by McCain the moderate. And that was something they had to underrmine, which they did. And that, along with McCain’s mishandling of the TARP issue, snatched certain defeat out of the jaws of a possible victory

And McCain did nothing to protect her back - not only during the election, as you note, but even now, 8 months later. That is a stain of dishonor on McCain.

I was born and raised in Ketchikan AK and moved out when I was 19 because I didn’t want to be confined on a small rock in SE Alaska.

Alaska politics was always a machine. My family still lives there liked Sarah Palin because she directly confronted that Alaskan political machine with the intention of breaking it. Her heart was in the right place because she never came off as somebody that was running for office just so they can gain more power and influence over the masses. She wanted the masses to have more power and influence over government.

It may have been too early to leap onto a national stage like this and she may have been blindsided by the snobbery and anger that has risen from the oligarchs of Washington or the radical left in every state in the union.

What the conservatives saw was potential. Even though she may not appear to know anything about foreign policy (although I think she’s smart enough NOT to condemn a Latin American country for following it’s constitution) or on other national issues but they say potential. They saw the same person Alaskan’s saw in her. Somebody that can break the long establish the Washington machine that uses liberty, freedom and your money as it’s fuel.

To paraphrase Glenn Beck-they believe that she can destroy the system.. Not join it.

These “PalinBots” as you call them are just the traditional conservatives that were hoping that somebody can come along that take Reagan’s torch and run with it for a while to remind the rest of the country of the finer things that are associated with conservatism. And they don’t want to let her go just yet.

They are holding on to one of Palin’s arms while the Alaskan republican welfare queens are holding on to the other while pure hate-mongering democrats trash her and her family while leaving her a $500,000 legal bill to pay.

I hope she does make a run for the White House. If not in 2012 then sometime down the road. If there were more politicians like here then there wouldn’t be any “PalinBots” in the lower 48 for AKSteveB to be mad about.

Chrisin206

I thought she had a great political future both before and after she was selected by John McCain as his running mate; and said so consistently both before and after she was selected as John McCain’s running mate. However, I also remained convined that she was NOT ready for the Federal office in 2008; irrespective of how badly the MSM treated her and they did threat her badly.

My problem was never with Sarah Palin herself but with many of her supporters. Quite frankly, the way many of them wanted her on the ticket simply or primarily because “she was a woman and would ‘win’ the women’s vote” and others who switched to supporting her after initially arguing themselves that she did not have the experience and/or other qualifications yet to be on the national ticket proved to me that many conservatives lacked integrity. The support that many so-called conservatives gave Bush for TARP 1 only a few weeks later only strengthened my point but that is neither here nor now. Sorry.

But as for Sarah Palin, I still had high hopes for her. Unfortunately, as time went on, she never really progressed, IMHO. She seemed content to simply speak in shibboleths and allow her Palinbots to carry on. I’m sorry, but I never heard her make an indepth argument for consrvatism; for example, like Mike Sanford did in wanting to reject the “stimulus” money. Instead, Sarah Palin releases press statements about her cutting the size of Alaska’s government when in actuality all she did was shift money around in a supplemental budget.

Sorry, but I was expecting, hoping for more.

It’s not that I dislike Sarah Palin — indeed, I still think I have a better opinion of her than Achance and AKSteveB — it just that the more I looked at her the less I was truly seeing. Maybe the problem was her Palinbots did not force her to grow: she always seemed to remain the young governor with not even one term of experience who would (hopefully, maybe) one day be ready for national office but not yet.

And now she is resigning.

Now, I don’t think she will ever go on to greater political office. Now, she will always be inexperienced.

I can understand her wanting to protect her family — although Bristol’s comment that “abstinence is not realistic for some teenagers” seems taken right out of the playbook of Planned Parenthood and did nothing to “protect” Sarah — but the liberal press is going to go after her whether she is in office or not. Even now, some of her supporters (and not all are Palinbots although many are) are (mistakenly) saying that this is a brilliant move on her part because now she can critisize Obama and the liberals without being attacked herself but does anyone really think her no longer being governor means she will not be a press target?

Although I have my concerns with Sarah Palin — and many more concerns with her most vociferous supports — her resigning is not a good thing for conservatism. And although, again, I can understand a decision to protect one’s family, this is a decision that she (and we) ultimately only have herself to “blame.”

But I’ve always understood what Art went on about Sarah being unable to bring the Alaska Republicans together. Perhaps she would have as a lame duck, but there was no incentive for them to band together to help her out of the Ethics jams that the D’s kept putting her in.

Her problem was that she never made peace with Frank’s wing of the party, and it did cost her in the long run.

Unlike most on this board, I actually believe that Palin has a shot as a national candidate, only in the absence of two people: Jeb Bush and David Petraeus. The rest of our potential candidates out there are midgets.

Especially Mitt Romney. Anyone who lost his butt to a dead candidate like McCain last year deserves no one’s nomination going forward. Sarah is strong with the rank and file right now precisely because there are no Eisenhowers, Reagans, or Nixons astride the Republican landscape.

That’s what a lot of the RedState crowd doesn’t get. It’s a roomful of Midgets. In that environment, it’s easy for Mommy to come in and take over. Give her time on the stump, a good speech coach, and good policy people and she can be much better in two years’ time.

But right now, her job, if she wants out of any doghouse, is to do what she can to shave the Socialist majority in the House and the Senate. And if she does that, and does it to good effect, I would hope that a lot of you find time to thank her in November of next year.

Our media playing “who’s smarter than a fifth grader” with Palin only was dirty pool, and then attacking her family, disgusting.

Zero never would have risen above the title of community organizer. He doesn’t even know how many states we have.

http://www.thealaskastandard.com/content/why-sarah-palin-failed

that I think gives a pretty good summary of her term as governor. The author Dan Fagan is a local talk show host in Anchorage, probably the closest thing we have to a Rush Limbaugh three legged stool conservative.