Posted on 07/03/2009 10:57:15 PM PDT by pissant
With respect to many of the Palinologists below, I think they're getting way too hepatomantic over the entrails.
As a political move for anything other than the 2010 Senate race, today's announcement is a disaster. And I'm not sure it's a plus for the Senate - and, even if it were, the manner and timing suggest it was not a professionally planned event and therefore is unlikely to have any grand strategy behind it.
So Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?
In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer".
Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.
Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?
National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.
Great article....
This is a good article.
And Steyn is right.
It’s time to cut bait on Sarah Palin as the future hope of the GOP, just as she’s cut bait on political life.
She’s not the Moses to lead us out of the desert.
I never put any energy into hoping or thinking she’d be my gal for 2012 anyway.
A voice of reason. Maybe she just screw younz! I love my family and I’m not willing to move from God’s country and sacrifice them to the gods of power and celebrity. Let the sheep fend for themselves.
It is the explanation that makes the most sense, her family has been so battered by this process, by the unmitigated venom of the Democrat attacks against her, that they are simply withdrawing into their Alaskan reality. They never lived by the Beltway reality. They are just going home.
Guess you listened to MSNBC's Mitchell instead of paying attention to Palin's statement.
Not a lot is known yet about what Sarah Palin’s reasons for resigning are, and I am getting pretty tired of all the speculating, kvetching and etc., but I am of the mind that she feels she can work for conservatives in other ways than running for office. Maybe I’m wrong and she really is saying enough is enough. I guess time will tell, but I just don’t see her quitting politics entirely.
Besides, she’s still young and still has time to run for office in the future. ;-)
Good one by Steyn, as always.
TO ALL: DO NOT RESPOND TO counterpunch, THE TROLL!
M.S., Is really telling (the anal) "the Washington D.C. King Makers" to go "straight to hell".
Not everyone has drank the Palin Kool-Aid.
Some of us recognized it for the political poison it is when she imploded last October.
The best thing Palin can do is stay away from the GOP's "professional planners".
Sorry bud, but political life is what it is. If you decide to enter then you need to stand by your commitments.
I can’t back someone who’s going to cut and run when the going gets tough. If she thinks being governor is tough, she would have one hell of a rude awakening living in the White House.
If she never plans on running for president, she may have made the right decision. If she does, I won’t be supporting her. Not after this...
I’ve spent too many years in my life wishing a candidate would live up to my expectations, only to have them fail that. I just don’t live in the dream world any longer.
I’m just not going to hope beyond hope that Sarah will work things out.
So Steyn steps on his own words of caution by offering his own assumption. And not even an original one at that. For Steyn, this is subpar.
Well, it's not McCain, and it's not the Huckster, and it's certainly not the slimy Romney.... Who do you suggest, genius?
What about Reagan?
Oh! ....He's just another Myth(bot). 
I suggest you get ready for some plagues...
Why do you think she’s getting tens of thousands of people to attend her small events, if she imploded last October?
She didn’t implode last October. Good grief, everyone’s entitled to a setback once in a while.
Until today, she was headed on to be a top contender in 2011/12.
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