i.e. here

i.e. here

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.

I’ve said all along that she’d pull the pin while she could still tout her “success” with the gas pipeline, ethics, the :energy rebate,” etc. She has let the budget spiral out of control and played politics against the Legislture with last year’s budget so she could look good and play pander games.

Again, please correct me if I am wrong and/or misunderstanding you.

He could still safely be voting “present’ in either the Illinois state house or US Senate.

Alaska desperately needs to increase oil production and her DNR has done almost nothing towards that end except capitulate to Exxon on the Pt. Thompson lease issue. I’d characterize her Department of Natural Resources management as perhaps her greatest error. She was so intent on being the un-Republican and, especially, the un-Murkowski that she attracted a number of dissidents and malcontents from the Murkowski Administration and among those were the upper level managers of DNR during the Murkowski Administration. These are the people who very noisily quit over the gas line contract that Murkowski negotiated with the producers. They first worked with the Democrats and some of the more politically ambitious Republicans to kill the gas line deal with the legislature. They then worked with candidate Palin to discredit both Murkowski and his COS as having made a corrupt bargain with the producers, this all happening with the FBI perp walking Alaska legislators in the background. On her election, she put them in charge of DNR and, strangely, not even the lefties have taken a hard look at the connections some of them have to TransCanada, the Canadian outfit with which her administration made a deal to build a gasline and gave them a half billion dollars in seed money. In any event, come ‘10, “Where’s the gas line?” and “Where’s the half-billion?” will be questions that candidate Palin would find difficult to answer.

Likewise, her ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) oil revenue scheme is based on the assumption of continuing very high oil prices. When the price is high, it is essentially a windfall profits tax. When the price is low, it produces very little revenue for Alaska. That can be somewhat justified with the long ago amortized legacy fields at Prudhoe Bay. It is, however, a major disincentive to the companies to develop other fields which are more remote or more expensive to develop. Generally, high prices motivate the producers to develop more costly prospects, but the ACES scheme takes away the profits they might expect from higher prices. In other words, it gave Alaska two or three years of astounding revenue, so much even that profligate Alaskans could not figure out how to spend it all. Those two or three years happened to coincide with Sarah Palin’s election to Governor and it is easy to be popular when you’re giving away money by the bucketful.

In any event, Sean Parnell is a solid if unremarkable political figure and a former legislator who should be able to have much better relations with the Legislature than Palin has had. He has some work to do as well to restore his relationship with the Republican Party here after his Palin-backed run against Don Young and his echoing her “kick them to the curb” attitude towards the now largely discredited FBI investigations.

Hopefully, Alaska politics can drop out of the National limelight beginning July 26th. The Democrats are usually pretty disciplined about simply ignoring opponents if giving them attention makes them better known or more popular. Their PDS is feeding her and the attacks have strengthened her support. Hell, they’ve even managed to make me feel sympathy for her, no easy task.

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

And let’s be real, the media is going to make certain that the public never forgets that. And being honest, although they will probably take a special glee out of reporting it about her, it still would be a legitimate point.

Moreover, this does go along with something that Achance once said and predicted: that Sarah Palin would not stick around as governor long enough to clean up the “mess” she created.

Note to Achance: I don’t think “mess” was the word you used but I do remember a post or diary or two by you where you said that Sarah Palin would find some way to avoid the consequencies of some of the political decisions she was making in Alaska.

Note also that, from the very little I know, I would not say that Palin is necessarily leaving Alaska in a mess. (Again, I will leave Achance and AKSteveB and others who know much better about Alaska to debate that one.) But I am saying that it does make her look like a quitter who is getting out now while the getting may be good.

And yes, I do think that will significantly hinder her political future.

Frankly, I’d support her for National office. It’s no secret that I don’t like her, but nobody who’s been around them much can like any politician. She’d be an arrogant, self-centered and self-serving POS, but, she’d be our POS, that’s about as good as it gets in politics.

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.

Seriously, I do get your point that Sarah quitting is not a way to get people likely to support you. I’m just saying that at 45 she is young enough to still get a second act before she is dead.

It’s just that — while I can understand, sympathize and possibly even agree with her decision to resign in order to protect her family — she now looks like a quitter to me. And that, quite frankly, makes me less likely to support her.

Although Sarah Palin has gone through a lot, can any of us imagine Ronald Reagan or even Margaret Thatcher (to use a woman as an example) resigning from office in such a way?