The lame duck excuse was just silly, as many others have managed to accomplish things during their last year in office.
The cost to Alaska was an interesting argument, except if the ethics complaints were truly frivolous as they appeared, the same people will be able to do the same thing to the next Governor — so what Alaska needs is to fix their ethics laws so people can’t spend Alaska into bankruptcy by filing frivolous charges.
Quitting for the ethics costs only makes sense if there is something special about her that makes her an easier target for the ethics complaints. Note that traveling a lot out of the state appears to be such a thing, but that would have been covered by her simply saying that she wanted to take a national stage and she couldn’t do that from Alaska and still serve her state.
Quitting because her family voted to have her quit isn’t logical or sensible. While I might well respect my elected representative using their sound judgment to make a decision like this, I didn’t elect their children, and I don’t really care if their children want them to quit or not. If I quit my job every time my kids voted for it, I would be penniless.
Quitting because of the attacks on her family doesn’t make sense, unless she is quitting politics. If they attacked her as Governor, they are going to attack her in any public role. The attacks were terrible, and we needed the media to wake up and call them for what they were. The people were getting on her side, and those who attacked her children WERE being called out.
But now she has validated their tactics — they wanted her out, and she quit. The next person they go after will have to work harder to prove the tactics won’t work on them.
Nothing about this was unethical, so I didn’t address that — I’ve certainly not called her unethical for quitting.
No, there’s also something else.
As long as she was Governor, the Obama Administration was going to throw roadblocks in front of the AGIA Gasline project. They had no incentive to help her burnish her credentials.
Art Chance, no friend of Palin and a Murkowski ally in Alaska, speculated that Salazar, on Obama’s orders, would do what he could to throw monkey wrenches in the permitting process down the line. He wrote this several months ago, before there was any indication that Palin wouldn’t run again. This is something Palin probably understood, even after securing Exxon’s participation with TransCanada in the project.
With Palin out of the picture, smooth political sailing for her baby, the AGIA line, looks more likely.
Trust me: not only is Congressman Billybob right about her needing to get down to the Lower 48 for two weeks at a time to do the Rubber Chicken circuit, but she needed to fall on her sword to save AGIA from being stalled out by the Obama Administration.
I will bet you that came into her considerations.
Best,
Chris
Well, they thought they had killed Jesus too. Until He showed up alive again, very inconveniently for His enemies, on Day 3. I’d not be too concerned with how clear her words were then, but rather with how clear her deeds are now.