And Then There Were None

Effective 23 July, bloggers won't have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore. The people of several states are resplendently verdant with envy, owing to the fact that their governors will not be leaving as well. Mrs. Palin's resignation came as a benign surprise on Friday afternoon. She has been on campaign for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination since four seconds after John McCain named her as the Vice-presidential nominee last summer.


This is very good news for Democrats. The Barracuda has been a perpetual gift to liberals. Instead of the holiday weekend news cycle being dominated by health care and cap-and-trade debates, the Democrats had the public implosion of another GOP figure, and the commensurate rumors, speculation and innuendo. No, innuendo is not a term to be inappropriately bandied with a South American mistress.


Democrats have played this smart. When one's opposition has arrayed itself into a circular firing squad, the most appropriate move is to sit back and hold the video camera.


In Mrs Palin's case, no one who watched the July 3 speech could be blamed for asking if this were actually a great bit of satire committed by Tina Fey. Palin was ranting and only marginally coherent, indicating either a need for meds or that they had not been taken.


Her statements were either factually misleading, crediting Lincoln for the Alaska purchase which happened two years after he died, or out of left field. Then she was surprised when someone way, wayyy out of the progressive mainstream got a wild hair and included Trig in a particularly offensive bit of internet tomfoolery.

The progressive mainstream tends to be a little bit sensitive to those who have been marginalized by those who would be bullies. The bullies would be much more concentrated on the right than the left, and defined as authoritarian. Right wing bullies can dish it out but they can't take it.

Governor Palin and Governor Palin only is accountable for her words and actions. Her opponents in the press and the Internet did not select her party affiliation, her positions on the issues, or her camera presence. There is a big difference between plain-spoken and inarticulate, and Governor Palin crossed that line about ten months ago.

Thousands of bloggers, columnists and commentators would be pressed to invent a character who provides a better well of material in their own imaginations. The right has provided a figure who combines paranoia and the least palatable bits of partisan rhetoric into one spunky, gaffe-prone but telegenic figure. One could call her the offspring of Dan Quayle and Michelle Malkin, although it would be physiologically impossible.

The least bad result (for Republicans) of Palin's resignation is also the least likely. In other words, Palin's resignation is as it appears on face value. Mrs. Palin is unable to fulfill her obligations as defined under the Alaska state constitution. She resigned to allow her state government to move forward on issues without gratuitous scrutiny of appropriate decisions made within her duties as Governor. Mrs. Palin will abjure from politics to spend more time with her family.

And that time will be spent on a palm-fringed island on the Aleutian archipelago. One asks: Does smoke up the behind affect the human body in the same way as smoke through the lungs?

Almost as unlikely is the chance of a major office-killing scandal. By office-killing, one refers to federal indictments or video evidence including any or all of the following: a live girl, a dead boy, or a marital aid and a moose. If any of this existed, it would have been on Youtube by now, so progressives can wipe that hope off the board, although we are better off with Palin still in the picture.

Governor Palin is ducking out of the mundane details of operating a state with a population which could be lost in any of a dozen metropolitan areas. She will likely choose a career of face time as a professional public speaker. Palin will spend her nights facing groups with names like "The Christian Nationalist Patriot's Liberty Heritage Front," for three years. She will portray herself as the embodiment of true conservatism; defender of the average guy; slasher of taxes; destroyer of big government; hounded away from her sworn duties by elitists who wish to silence the voices of her audience.

This is a fantasy-for Democrats. Mrs. Palin's oratory will improve, because it can't get any worse. She can't use a teleprompter, because it would require her knowing how to read. She has 18 months to become fully immersed in believing her own hyperbole.

Palin is an attention junkie. She isn't competent enough to know the difference between the score offered to "Not Obama," and that which is hers.

If Republicans are fortunate, Palin overdoses on attention before the nomination. Democrats already know about attention-junkie candidates (Gore, Hillary Clinton) who can't handle their fix.