Gas is whirring through the bellies of our resident media windbags as they try to figure out what the hell Sarah Palin was trying to say in her resignation speech. LaDowd's supersnarky column yesterday rips both Sarah and her speech to shreds of crumpled tissue paper, and for once I'd say MoDo's vicious claws were deserved.
As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.
On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard. Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News, played catch-up.
What looked like a secret wedding turned out to be a public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued: Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor.
"Incoherent" is probably generous. The speech is gobbledygook requiring you to believe that the equivalent of half a state governor's term of office is the same as a dead fish floating on top of the water, and that finishing out the term you were elected to is "politics as usual" and tacky as hell.
But I have given my reasons... no more "politics as usual" and I am taking my fight for what's right - for Alaska - in a new direction.
Um, excuse me? What "new direction"? Up the creek without a paddle?
But some of us think Palin is bailing out (pun intended) not so much because she needs the time to ready her bid for greatness but because there are all those ethics charges hanging over her head and because, as TBogg puts it, she has "grifter smarts".
[S]omewhere along the line (I'm guessing when her Alaska Trust Fund only pulled in about $125,000 of the $500,000 that they were seeking for her mounting legal bills) she decided to cut bait and make a dash for the cash sooner rather than later. As we move farther away from the election and more little tidbits come trickling out of the McCain campaign, time is not going to be her friend.
Sarah Palin isn't smart in what we might call conventional ways, but she has grifter smarts and knows that she can make a better living working the wingnut welfare circuit preaching to the already converted than she can in politics. She'll never be President; you know it and she knows it. Everyone should know it. But there are a lot of rubes out there who think she's got a shot and they're just dumb enough to pay good money thinking it will happen. That is what she's counting on.
I'll hang with the "working the wingnut circuit" for $$$, which it always seems to be rolling in, never mind influence (Ross goddam Douthat at the NYT? Donnez-moi une break), but I don't believe for a second that this dumb blonde thinks she can't actually be president. What she's counting on isn't a sucker clientele - she knows that's there - what she's counting on is a monumental Obama implosion when his policies don't work and every gets ticked off, at which point she expects to be swept into office on a wave of angry anti-liberalism. Don't forget, she really believes all that crap she throws around. She isn't smart enough to know better.
Personally my hope is that she'll run and the mordant morans of the GOP base, white male knuckle-dragging, tongue-hanging-out chauvanists all, will act like the long-in-the-tooth frat boys they are and nominate what to them would be the irresistable and Hawtest of All Time 2012 ticket: Palin for P and Carrie Prejean for VP. Can't you just see it? The Convention swim-suit competition? The dog sled/surfboard photo ops? The acres of cheesecake all over the tubes as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox vie for the tackiest skin-shoot week after week after week? And let's face it: those two were made for each other. It's Billo's Dream Ticket. His loofah wouldn't be allowed to sit still for months.
But for my money the best part will be the speeches. Gracie Allen and Judy Holliday Run for President. It's a Made-for-Teevee spectacular that will last longer than Michael Jackson's funeral, longer than the OJ trial, longer than Clinton's impeachment. It would be the political American Idol only twice as funny.
In fact, with the GOP's reputation firmly swirling down the throat of the porcelein god, it might be better if Sarah formed her own third party. Call it the Dumb Blonde Party and staff it with ex-Bunnies, Bettys, Charm Queens, and Adam Sandler groupies.
Fuck it. If our politics is going to drag its ass through the gutter anyway, we might as well have some fun with it.
UPDATE 1: (8.30pm) Bill Kristol says Palin quit to run for president in 2012. Kristol is never right about anything. Therefore, the Big News is that Palin will NOT be running in 2012. Pass it on.
UPDATE 2: (7.7.09) From the Charlotte Observer (I couldn't resist):
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