The self-styled victim of "the politics of personal destruction" has struck back at her tormenters by leaving Alaska's statehouse with trademark twinkly, crinkly aggression.
Sarah Palin dropped her bombshell on the eve of a holiday weekend, sending TV's talking heads scrambling back from vacation to studios or huffing over long-distance phone lines to parse her resignation.
Their puzzled but predictable responses ranged from William Kristol and Mary Matalin hailing the move as a masterstroke toward the 2012 presidential nomination to the consensus about it as bizarre and, in the words of Republican strategist Ed Rollins, "terribly inept."
In ten months on the national scene, Palin has tried to make ineptness an asset by equating competence with "politics as usual" and picturing herself as champion of the resentful and inarticulate from Joe the Plumber down
Palin's complaints about the media notwithstanding, her next logical move will be to follow the folk wisdom, "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em," and become a commentator for Fox News, where Rupert Murdoch will surely be happy to provide her with an income and national platform to ease the pain of her abuse by David Letterman and Vanity Fair.
In that role, and in lucrative lectures to right-wing Republican faithful, the former Governor will be free to exhibit her 21st century Animal Farm--from the pit bull with lipstick through yesterday's additions, the lame duck who milks a paycheck and dead fish who go with the flow.
In that ramble, Gov. Palin asserted that it would be "tempting and more comfortable to just kind of keep your head down and plod along and appease those who are demanding, hey, just sit down and shut up. But that’s a worthless, easy path out. That’s a quitter’s way out."
Then she quit.
Her future colleague, Mike Huckabee, was rushed onto Fox News to hail her "spunk." Unlike Mary Tyler Moore's old TV boss Ed Asner, Huckabee was both collegially and politically restrained from a more understandable reaction, "I hate spunk."
I listened to her speech earlier today. It had the same impact on me as chalk screeching on blackboard. But there is one quote that stood out:
ReplyDelete"I polled the most important people in my life, my kids, where the count was unanimous," she said.
Another conjecture: Family problems. Her youngest child is handicapped. Her older children have been under a media microscope and subject to gossip, jokes, and ridicule ... notwithstanding that infamous teen pregnancy.
Why not ask this question: Why do teenage girls have early pregnancies, end up in early marriages, or become runaways? Answer: Parental negligence, parents too preoccupied with themselves and their careers. Teen pregnancy is the price a parent pays for not paying attention to signs and symptoms ... and living up to one’s responsibilities at home.
Palin has never been presidential material nor will she ever be. She is a media product … nothing more. Perhaps she knows this … in a begrudging and resentful sort of way. She manages always to do what she does best: Turn her liabilities into political assets and project her own failings onto her critics.