[RonDog]

Accidental Good Fortune? Or Strategic Genius By The Woman Tony Knowles Called ‘Alley Cat Smart’

Whoever picked the title to this article was a SERIOUS student of Governor Palin.

For those of you who:

- are not from Alaska,
- have not seen "The Undefeated" yet, or
- are not HARD CORE Sarah Palin fans...

Tony Knowles is:

an American Democratic politician and businessman who served as the seventh Governor of Alaska from December 1994 to December 2002.

Barred from seeking a third consecutive term as governor in 2002, he ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2004 and again for governor in 2006. [losing to SARAH PALIN]

And, even if you **did** know that much, here's MORE, from www.businessinsider.com:

Before she was Sarah Palin, she was the governor of Alaska.

The story of her rise in Alaska politics is not one that conforms with her media image, so it is rarely told.  But it is an extraordinary tale; one woman against the vaunted Murkowski machine, who used all of her considerable political skills to defeat the state's thoroughly corrupt Republican Party. 

Joshua Green of The Atlantic Monthly tells this story well.

Some excerpts:

-- snip --

“She’s what I call ‘alley-cat smart,’” Tony Knowles, the former Democratic governor, told me.

“It’s not about ideology. She knows how to pick her way down the political route that she feels will be the most beneficial to what she wants to do.”

In the Republican primary, Palin crushed Murkowski, delivering one of the worst defeats ever suffered by an incumbent governor anywhere. She went on to have little trouble dispatching Knowles, an oil-friendly Democrat...

Like Johhny Carson used to say, "I did not know that!"

The number of people who **did** know this kind of "inside baseball" information must be farly small, one would suppose. ;)

[Windflier]

“She’s what I call ‘alley-cat smart,’” Tony Knowles, the former Democratic governor, told me.

“It’s not about ideology. She knows how to pick her way down the political route that she feels will be the most beneficial to what she wants to do.”

And this, from a former Democrat Governor, whom she stomped in her run for the Alaska Governor's office. You almost couldn't ask for a better recommendation than that.