There is a big difference between Palin quitting her position as Alaska Governor, to Reagan running as a favorite son in 1968. Truth is, the two situations are entirely different. Reagan never quit. Besides, Palin has not announced her intentions for 2012 and this constant comparison of Palin to Reagan, does Palin a disservice. Let Palin be Palin and let the cards fall where they may.
Read the following cut from Reagan's autobiography, "An American Life" and pay close attention to the final two sentences.
"Then early in 1968, several leaders of the state Republican party came to see me and said they wanted me to run for the Republican presidential nomination on the California primary ballot the following June as a favorite-son candidate. If I did, he said the party could avert a repeat of the kind of bloody battle between moderates and conservatives that split the party so badly in 1964. I agreed with them that there were still lots of hard feelings left over from the Goldwater-Rockefeller primary fight and that a heated primary race between the three major candidates in 1968 - Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Romney - would probably reopen the wounds. But running for president was the last thing on my mind. I'd been governor for less than two years and I said it would look ridiculous if I ran for president. But they countered: "A favorite-son candidate is not the same thing as a real candidate. If you enter the primary as a favorite son, the major candidates won't enter the race, so we'll avoid a disastrous primary fight; as governor, you'll win the primary, but that only means you'll head the delegation to the convention."
"Okay," I said, "I'll do that, I'll enter my name as a favorite son, but that's all, and only on one condition: that our delegation be representative of all sides in this split, not just one group." They promised to balance the delegation - and they did.
By the time the convention opened in Miami Beach in early August, George Romney had lost his initial momentum and the race had boiled down to a battle between Rockefeller and Nixon, who was completing his great political comeback after the defeats of 1960 and 1962. When I arrived at the convention, I was surprised to learn quite a few delegates had pledged their support to me, but I continued to tell them I wasn't a candidate and didn't want it. But they'd just go away and say I was a candidate. Well, when the balloting took place, I got a sizable number of votes behind Nixon and Rockefeller, but Nixon had the clear majority and so I ran up to the front of the hall and jumped on the platform and asked the chairman for permission to address the convention.
At first, I was turned down because of a procedural rule, but after a minute they agreed to waive the rule and let me speak and I made a motion that the delegates nominate Richard Nixon by acclamation and they did so with a tremendous roar. Because I consented to be a favorite-son candidate that year, some people have suggested that I was bitten by the presidential "bug" back in 1968. But it wasn't true. When Nixon was nominated, I was the most relieved person in the world. I knew I wasn't ready to be president. I knew there was still lots of work to be done in Sacramento."
The “quitter” label won’t stick to Palin, as long as you’re factoring in the actual facts that led to her resignation.
If you’re not, then you’re just buying into the leftstream media’s spin on it, or have ulterior motives for continuing to put that label on her.