Just to start out…. good riddance.
In case you’ve been in a cave since the 4th of July, Sarah Palin has resigned as Alaska’s governor. She’s also been incoherently ranting and whining about why. None of which is even remotely believable.
While I have exactly zero information about the actual reasons for her resignation, I do know this:
No one with political aspirations gives up power, especially governor level power without a very good reason. And make no mistake, it would have been MUCH more advantageous to a potential 2012 presidential run for her to have served her full term and built her political credibility in the interim through extensive prep-work with political advisors.
There was some speculation that she might start pursuing a pundit position, making speeches and appearing on fox news. The Palins have taken on significant expense defending themselves from numerous state ethics complaints, and they may just genuinely need the money. That may be the case, but it will significantly damage her ability to secure a party nomination come 2012.
It could be that Palin is just getting awful political advice, or is ignoring advice from those who know. It’s now relatively well documented that she ignored the advice of McCain’s advisors on multiple occasions during the last campaign, and ended up looking foolish as a result. We might be simply witnessing another act of incompetence on Palin’s part.
But I have a strong suspicion that there’s something more at work here. Something bad happened, and Palin resigned rather than facing it.
As Andrew Halcro (another alaskan gubernatorial candidate in 2006) puts it:
The bottom line is that there has to be something major that forced Palin to bail out with sixteen months left in her term.
Something so big or so damaging that she feared dealing with it in the public arena.