There are many theories as to why Sarah Palin announced that she intends to step down as governor of Alaska. She might see this as beneficial to prepare for a 2012 run, especially as she will be able to avoid making the hard choices required of a governor during a recession. She might have decided take advantages of the big dollars she can make outside of politics so she can support her taste in clothing. She might be resigning due to a scandal. Keeping an eye on Russia might have become too big a responsibility for her to continue. Josh Marshall has what is perhaps the most bizarre theory of all:
Let me start by saying I don’t think this is likely. But given our experience with Larry Craig, I do think it’s worth considering. Remember, former Sen. Larry Craig came out and announced he was resigning his office. But folks who listened closely noticed that he only announced his ‘intent to resign‘. And later he decided that his ‘intent’ had changed and he wouldn’t resign after all. He ended up serving right through the last day of his term in January 2009.
Now, Palin’s situation is different in as much as Craig was under great pressure to resign and the ‘intend to’ workaround ended up just buying him time. Palin did this totally out of the blue. But given the thundering derision that has greeted her decision and exposure as a quitter of gargantuan proportions, is it possible she’ll reconsider? After all, if she’s resigning, why doesn’t she just resign? Why wait until the end of July?
This is not very likely as, while the announcement has generated a tremendous amount of publicity, to announce that she has changed her mind would make Palin appear even more ridiculous than she does now. Such a move would wind up defining her, and we can imagine how the late night comics would find easy laughs by questioning if she plans to change her mind on every decision she should make.
Still, with Sarah Palin we cannot exclude the totally absurd. She often does act impulsively and irrationally. In case Palin should decide to announce that she has changed her mind, Matthew Cooper has even written the start of her speech.
Had I not seen Cooper’s name at the top I would have thought that Palin was being quoted. Amazing. Perfectly captured.
For the life of me, I cannot believe that the Republicans are really, really, really serious about thinking SP is a viable presidential candidate. Did they not learn anything at all from the last election? Because they tend to think only in terms of black and white, do they think the only reason Obama won was because he’s black? Do they not have one person who has the intelligence and the courage to stand up against ostracizination and shout, NO?
That was an example of a Bushism – actually I’m not sure he could even come up with that one. How about “stand up against being ostracized.” All better?
The mostly conservative, mostly Southern, mostly country club white males who control the decision making processes of the Republican Party do not understand how people who do not share their mindset think. This is why they have no problem whatsoever accepting women and minorities who DO share their mindset, because despite any prejudices they may feel most truly believe that the mindset trumps everything else.
The problem is that they do not understand that most minorities, women, and many of the working class will not accept someone solely because they are minority, a woman, or have proud working class roots. They fail to understand that in order to appeal to such groups they need to understand and accept the experience of those groups. They do not understand any experience but their own relatively sheltered experiences (for the most part), and regardless of whether they have personal knowledge of such experiences or not they do not accept any mindset but their own as valid.
This is why even the best, brightest, most competent, and least objectionable of such men sometimes flounder. George H.W. Bush had never bought a carton of milk himself, how would he know what it costs? Proposed Republican tax credits for health care have no relation to actual health care costs for the majority of Americans because the Republicans designing the plans do not have to pay for health care because they have the money to pay for the best coverage.
Though there are exceptions, some people are obviously stupid and others are obviously malicious, most individuals on the right suffer less from stupidity or malice than from a fundamental failure to understand how the world actually functions either because their experience did not include the world the rest of us lived in or because their own success leads them to believe anyone who wishes to succeed can succed just by trying. Anyone else is therefore lazy, whiny, inferior, corrupt, or some combination of two or more of those factors.
This does not, of course, cover the more obviously superior mindset of the religious right, who bear a genuine belief in their superiority compared to ‘the heathen’ and consider ‘people of God’ (which means anyone who believes like them) and ‘the heathen’ (which includes anyone of faith who does not share their prejudices and fetishes) are and by right must be enemies. This is a very different sort of ignorance of the real world… the notion that the real world is broken beyond hope and their personal religious ecstasy is the only fix.