she could have stayed governor,and probably won again.
How could she have stayed governor? At the rate those bogus lawsuits were coming, almost one per week towards the end, she would have been nearly $2 million in debt by the end of her first term. A politically motivated judge even quashed her attempt at a legal defense fund.
All the while, every policy and every bill she promoted was being deliberately deep-sixed by a combine of Dems and corrupt-bastard-club GOP-ers, to keep her from having a single political success to her name. Add the way the media trumpeted every single phoney “scandal” and lawsuit. Palin was getting a (ludicrously false) reputation for corruption and ineffectiveness.
Even when she stepped down, there was a completely bogus story (from the usual PDS bloggers, who made up reams of lies about her) that it was due to an impending federal indictment in regards to some housing materials Todd bought and used in building their house. CNN, NBC, and even FoxNews all reported this (”we hear through the grapevine that an FBI indictment is in the works for Palin, blah, blah, blah”). The FBI even had to come out a few days later and deny the whole story. But none of the news networks bothered to mention this or retract their story.
Anyway, I’m getting off on a tangent. But there was NO WAY for Palin to continue actually governing. Maybe she could have just stayed in office and allowed herself to be a bloodied-up pincushion, her family in crippling debt, and her reputation destroyed. But she sidestepped all that, wrote her book, made herself more solvent, and worked her tail off for the Republicans in the 2010 mid-terms. Only to be stabbed in the back by them once more.
But the media set their sites on her—exactly the way they did Dan Quayle—and made her a laughingstock. Once someone has been marginalized in that fashion it is hard to overcome. Folks on the opposite side will never understand her appeal and those in the middle will never hear the truth, only the snippets of the soundbites. She MAY have won again in Alaska, but between all the harassment she was enduring re: all the ethics complaints filed against her and the financial cost it was incurring it is hard to say. She, at least, is a potential bellweather.