Maybe that's because Perry actually took his job of being Governour seriously, instead of quitting halfway through to ride a bus around, make gazillions in speech fees, and make a self-congratulatory movie about himself?
Exactly
Self-congratulation? You have to be kidding. Have you ever been the victim of a systematic slander campaign? I have. If I could’ve had a third party volunteer to make a movie setting the story straight, yes you bet I’d have been jumping up and down glad to accept it. A good reputation is a thing of great value, and it hurts mightily when it is stolen away in the night. The movie is a just response to an unjust injury. Or did I miss the memo, where conservatives are now against getting at the truth?
And the “unserious governor” meme died with the email-gate that never was. If anything, that fiasco highlighted the inherent difference between a strong and a weak governorship. Texas governors are not the hands on CEOs that Alaska governors are, and the emails show it. Even her enemies have had to concede the emails reflect a deeply involved, conscientious, hands-on, hard-working, ethical person, about whom that last thing you could think, if you knew the facts, was that she was somehow unserious about her work.
As for the “quitting” meme, there are some few who may hold that against her, but there are a whole lot of us who think she did the right thing. So many of us, in fact, that her endorsement during the 2010 “shellacking” was a highly sought after prize. What value would the endorsement of a true quitter have? Zip.
So something is wrong with your math. I think it has something to do with the difference between “quitter” and “quitting.” Follow me on this. You don’t still have the first job you ever held, do you? I hope not. I hope you quit that job when it had run its course and you moved on to something better. Does that make you a quitter? Well, you’ve quit lots of times, right? Isn’t that a pattern of quitting? But by that measure, we’re all quitters, right?
So what’s really meant by “quitter?” We’ve all faced circumstances where we felt like dodging the difficulty rather than resolving it. That alone doesn’t make someone a quitter. But if we could have resolved that difficulty, but didn’t, because we were too lazy or too fearful to face it, and if we have a life pattern of running from difficulty, that’s really what it means, in my mind, to be a quitter.
So I think most people use the term hypocritically when they apply it to Palin. Have you achieved your maximum life potential? Done everything you wanted to do? Faced every single challenge in your life with fearlessness and hard work? Never faced a problem that you couldn’t tackle head on and pull out a success against all odds? Ever? Really? Because if you aren't living life to your maximum potential, it means you quit somewhere along the line, you gave up and chose to not give it your all. Isn't that what it means to be a quitter?
Yet Palin did not face a problem that it was in her power to resolve. I am an attorney. There are scenarios in the law where it is guaranteed you cannot win if you play by the rules. No amount of cleverness or tenacity or determination or force of will could buy her an escape from the ongoing defect in the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Acts (AS 39.52) that was being used to smother her governorship. It was her Kobayashi Maru.
Or, by analogy to chess, her queen was trapped. Protect the queen, and certain checkmate follows. Sacrifice the queen, but on your own terms, and you may survive to see better days in the endgame. Be honest. If you were faced with that dilemma, what would you do? If you were smart, you would have done exactly as she did. It was the best of all the bad choices available. And if winning remained your objective throughout, if this tactic was your last best chance to win against all odds, and you took it, isn’t that the exact opposite of quitting?
As for the money, it never ceases to amaze me how we Palinistas, in a conservative, ostensibly capitalist discussion forum like FR, have to constantly defend Palin for making however much money she wants to work to make. God bless her and may God double her money for every socialist who want her to feel guilty for making it.