hrothgar Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 Palin just announced that she will resign as governor before the end of the month http://www.ktva.com/ci_12746301 I suspect that this effectively kills any chance she has of any kind of presence on the national scene. The saner three quarters of the nation heaved a sigh of relief. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdonn Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 I suspect that this effectively kills any chance she has of any kind of presence on the national scene. Unfortunately, I don't believe that is true. Just look at Mitt Romney for example. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luke warm Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 i don't know what that means, i suppose we'll find out... maybe obama changed his mind and will now choose her for supreme court Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonottawa Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 I suspect that this effectively kills any chance she has of any kind of presence on the national scene. Unfortunately, I don't believe that is true. Just look at Mitt Romney for example. Yeah, but Romney has magic underpants. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Damn - I'm gonna miss her on Saturday Night Live. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 I enjoyed my professional life as a mathematician but I believe I would have been fine as an auto mechanic or a truck driver. Not as a politician. So part of my reaction to Palin chucking it in is "What took you so long?". Fifty journalists sniffing my butt is not my idea of the good life. But chuck it in she did. Any thought that this is a clever political move is pure fantasy. It may be her fantasy as well, but it is still fantasy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdonn Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Just a thought. Not sure that I'm right so please correct me if I'm not. If McCain had been elected, and Palin had now quit as vice president, wouldn't Nancy Pelosi have become the new vice president? Or is it only that she becomes president if something happens to both of them, but if only the vice president leaves that the president gets to choose a new one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helene_t Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 If Cascade and I both die then you will become the new official Water Cooler statistician, Josh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherdanno Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 If I and Cascade both die then you will become the new official Water Cooler statistician, Josh. Oh dear. Can we go back to imagining Palin as president, please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 When Agnew resigned, I believe there was no veep until Ford was confirmed. Since the speaker is already the designated successor, this seems sensible. So I think Pelosi, although next in line, would not become veep. But I also am not sure. The image of Palin turning over the "heartbeat away" role to Pelosi, whatever the exact details are, is amusing to contemplate. They will pry the vice presidency from my cold dead hands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdonn Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 If Cascade and I both die then you will become the new official Water Cooler statistician, Josh. I think han is very offended by that remark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onoway Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 She said she wasn't seeking reelection as governor but she certainly didnt discount having her eye on higher things...and who knew so many people would line up behind her in the first place? She's just so darn PERKY... News story says she has started a Sarah Political Action Force organisation so it seems unlikely she is intending to fade into the sunset anytime soon. So everyone can look forward to another visit to the zoo in 3 or so years perhaps.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 The concept of Palin ever being elected to national office is chilling enough to be made into a movie: Terminal Stupidity Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helene_t Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Sarah Political Action Force Sarah Political Action Movement would make a better acronym. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 She said she wasn't seeking reelection as governor but she certainly didnt discount having her eye on higher things...and who knew so many people would line up behind her in the first place? She's just so darn PERKY... News story says she has started a Sarah Political Action Force organisation so it seems unlikely she is intending to fade into the sunset anytime soon. So everyone can look forward to another visit to the zoo in 3 or so years perhaps.... I predict that in three years she will be one of the whos down in whoville. Litlle Sara Who who was not more than two. She presented one of those awful sports analogies about a point guard handing off the ball so the team can win. Her action is more like the point guard walking off the floor in the middle of the third quarter and vowing to be back for the really big game. Not likely. Sure, anything is possible in politics. But I would place a heavy bet on her being only an embarrassing memory in 2012. I wish her no ill, but it would be a shame if she did not realize that it is over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtK78 Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Just a thought. Not sure that I'm right so please correct me if I'm not. If McCain had been elected, and Palin had now quit as vice president, wouldn't Nancy Pelosi have become the new vice president? Or is it only that she becomes president if something happens to both of them, but if only the vice president leaves that the president gets to choose a new one? Amendment 25 - Presidential Disability and Succession. Ratified 2/10/1967. 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. [the rest of Amendment 25 not reproduced] Yes, the Speaker of the House is third in line to the Presidency. But the Speaker of the House would only take office as President in the absence or incapacity of both the President and the Vice President. If there is no Vice President, the President nominates a successor and Congress confirms the choice. Gerald Ford was nominated as Vice President by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned, and Nelson Rockefeller was nominated as Vice President by Gerald Ford after Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency upon Richard Nixon's resignation. There was an episode of West Wing (one of my favorite TV shows of all time) titled "25" in which, after the Vice President resigned, and before a new Vice President was nominated and confirmed, the President's daughter was kidnapped and held for ransom by terrorists. The President decided that he was unable to properly lead the country under the circumstances, and the Speaker of the House, who happened to be of the opposite political party, assumed the Presidency during the incapacity of the President. The issue of what happens during an incapacity of the President is dealt with in the portion of the 25th Amendment that I did not reproduce above. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherdanno Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Sure, anything is possible in politics. But I would place a heavy bet on her being only an embarrassing memory in 2012. I wish her no ill, but it would be a shame if she did not realize that it is over. If she runs, she has a solid base of strong supporters in the Republican primary, and would probably have more and more dedicated volunteers for her campaign than any other Republican candidate.It's not so clear she can ever expand beyond that base, but it's not such a bad starting point. Of course, the odds are she won't win the candidacy, but that is true for any candidate right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luke warm Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 if she runs she needs to become more knowledgeable about ... well, about most everything... but arend is mainly correct, she does appear to have a solid conservative (different from 'republican') base Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 if she runs she needs to become more knowledgeable about ... well, about most everything... but arend is mainly correct, she does appear to have a solid conservative (different from 'republican') base 2012: I buy drinks for the two of you if she is even a remotely serious candidate. Dem or Rep, Lib or Cons, you can't just chuck the governorship and then come back and say you want to be pres. No party, Dem or Rep, would take such an effort seriously. The base that will remain for her will now consist of people who have no interest whatsoever in winning the general election. That will not be enough. Whatever Dems may think, Reps are not totally nuts. I expect to see a conservative friend on Monday. I will ask him, but my guess is that Ms. Palin is past tense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luke warm Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 well i did say 'if'... i agree with you, actually, and think there's more to this story than meets the eye Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y66 Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 From Andrew Sullivan's continuing rant in today's Sunday Times. A quandary Andrew? Writing about Sarah Palin always presents a quandary. Does one operate under the usual assumption that this is a rational figure, a serious politician, a rising Republican star . . . or do you acknowledge the copious evidence that she cannot tell the truth, has delusions of grandeur, has no policy record to speak of and quit her job as Alaska governor halfway through her first term because she is, in her own explanation, “not a quitter”? I think that you have to proceed under the assumption that this is a joke of a candidate and a symptom of a political party in the middle of a mental breakdown. Mind you, I love the idea of Sarah Palin: a brassy, no-nonsense enemy of bloated government and corruption. That was probably John McCain’s rough idea of who she was in the five minutes his staff vetted her, and on the one occasion he’d met her, before offering her a chance to be leader of the free world. The idea of Sarah Palin, though, is sadly not the reality of Sarah Palin. The reality of Sarah Palin is that politics is a means to her higher goal: celebrity. Every action she takes is designed to make sense . . . if you believe that government is really a version of a reality show. The remote, David Lynch-style location, the family often in trouble with the law, the pregnant teenage daughter and her impossibly handsome redneck boyfriend, the boyfriend’s angry sister, an ornery Alaskan trooper, a few moose and mysterious pregnancies . . . and, well, the mini-series never ends. The best guess I’ve heard of the real reason for her abrupt departure is: “I’m a celebrity . . . get me out of here!” No one yet understands the real reason for a first-term governor just quitting on Friday, July 3, with no advance notice. If it were planned, why did her husband have to travel 300 miles to be there? Why do it all on a federal holiday before the Fourth of July? As Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous might note: “Who can say?” A blog reader scanned every single governor of all the states for the past century to find precedents. There are plenty of examples of governors being arrested, being impeached or dying. But only two others in American history have just up and quit: Eliot Spitzer, New York governor, involved in a professional escort service after he had vowed to clean up the state; and Jim McGreevey, whose gay lover blackmailed him. Palin has quit for no apparent reason. If it were to spend time with her family, it would be understandable, but she insists that’s not the case — and if you’re prepared to run for national office months after giving birth to an infant with Down’s syndrome, it’s a little odd to quit the governorship of a state when you have only a year and a half to go. It doesn’t make sense politically since it implies she could do the same thing at any moment in any future office. Why should anyone vote for someone who could quit for no good reason at any time? But trying to makes sense of Sarah Palin is a fool’s errand. I spent a lot of time last year trying to figure out how her bizarre pregnancy story could make any sense at all — it doesn’t — and came up with nothing but a suspicion that large parts of it were made up. If you present the facts to Palin spokespeople, they seem offended and regard you as some liberal hater. But the facts reveal she lies all the time about almost everything and so is probably improvising about her reasons for resigning. I’ve now compiled 32 incontrovertibly untrue statements of fact that she has uttered in the public record and never retracted. They are not the usual political lies — spinning or shading the truth; they are demonstrably, empirically untrue in the public record. Some are trivial: Palin said on television that she asked her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the vice-presidency offer; but that story contradicts details given by Palin herself, who said she accepted the offer on the spot. Others are more serious: Palin lied when she said the dismissal of Walt Monegan, her public safety commissioner, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire Mike Wooten (her former brother-in-law, who was at war with her family) from his job as a state trooper; in fact, the Branchflower report concluded she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men. Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to the famous “bridge to nowhere”, an expensive, pork-barrel government project; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor. I could go on. But the truth is, she’s a reality-show star vaulted to national prominence by a Republican party now so devoid of talent and desperate for some kind of support that it gambled on the political equivalent of Susan Boyle. One who couldn’t even sing. My own bet is that there is another scandal out there that would have forced her resignation if she hadn’t pre-empted it. Yet as plausible is the simple notion uttered by the only person in the melodrama who seems halfway sane: Levi Johnston, the teenage father of Palin’s grandson: “I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars.” With a multi-million-dollar book deal, Palin can now become the darling of the right-wing media in America without the tedious duties of actually, you know, governing something. If the book contains scandals we have not yet learnt about, it could be explosively big in the mainstream; if it’s a hagiography, it could sell well with an adoring religious base. And this helps explain the broader problem with American conservatism right now. It is less a movement than an industry. From Fox News to talk radio to conservative publishing houses, it has created an alternate and lucrative media reality that is worth a fortune to those able to exploit it. Alas, these alternative media thrive on paranoia, hatred of liberal elites and growing extremist rhetoric made worse by a hermetically sealed echo chamber of true believers. Anyone criticised by the left or even by the establishment right is a martyr in this world. In America, martyrdom sells. And Palin is a product worth lots of money. She wants some of it; and she has no actual interest in governing America (even though she’d love the title of president). She referred to giving up her “title” as governor, not her “office”. In this, she is the ultimate Republican of this degenerate moment: all culture war, no policy; all identity politics, no engagement with practical answers to difficult public problems; and all hysterical opposition to Barack Obama, no actual alternatives offered. Since even epic scandals heighten celebrity rather than diminish it, Palin’s future is secure. Her party’s? Getting bleaker by the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike777 Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 MY take:1) not that complicated...she just quit. I mean that in a negative sense of the word.2) I guess anyone can come back in politics my guess here not before 2020.3) Agree as others have mentioned, now she can make some bucks."Palin’s future is secure. Her party’s? Getting bleaker by the day." btw as for her firing that jerk....give it a rest...he was worst ahole. He beat her sister. Also pls stop blaming her for being born with an IQ lower than Obama. Feel free to blame her for not studying. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I am a big fan of Palin - I thought she won the talent part of the debate with her fictional short story about an Alaskan governor who could see Russia from her porch and put lipstick on dogs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike777 Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I am a big fan of Palin - I thought she won the talent part of the debate with her fictional short story about an Alaskan governor who could see Russia from her porch and put lipstick on dogs. Yes, this seems to be the viewpoint, ridicule ....one can never win at that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackshoe Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Nixon quit politics in, I believe, 1962. ("You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.") In 1968, he was elected President. Whether Palin's quitting is permanent remains to be seen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.