Ok, this is really weird. I was up at the Liberal Values summer office at Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island last year when John McCain first announced Sarah Palin’s name as his running mate. Last week we decided to come up to have what should be a spectacular pre-birthday party tonight and this trip unexpectedly turned out to also be related to Palin’s career. Sarah Palin has just announced her plans to step down as governor. Damn–now who will be keeping an eye on Russia for us?
We can only speculate as to why she suddenly announced this on a Friday of a holiday weekend (assuming she was not waiting until I got back to the Grand). Maybe this is part of a plan to begin campaigning very early for the 2012 nomination–although an early start certainly did not help John Edwards. She will hardly reassure those who believe she is not qualified for national office by running with less than a full term as governor of Alaska as experience.
Maybe she is resigning because of the way she has played fast and loose with the law, with a bigger scandal being about to break. Resignation is one way to generally prevent impeachment. I’ll be back at Grand Hotel for a long Labor Day weekend–maybe we will have an indictment by then.
Incidentally there is another connection to the Republicans with our trips to the Grand. While I was in the same suite on the day when John Kerry chose John Edwards in 2004 and John McCain chose Sarah Palin last year, as this was a suddenly planned brief trip it was too late to get our usual suite. Instead they placed us in the Eisenhower Suite. The last time we wound up in a different room from our usual suite we were in the Nancy Reagan Suite. In some ways the Eisenhower suite is preferable. The walls are pink in here, while the Nancy Reagan Suite is very bright red.
While these two suites are tied to the Republican Party, last summer I just missed a Democratic event. A few days before coming up last summer there was a Mackinac Island for Obama event. There is also another connection to both the Democrats and scandal and our trips here. One time when we were also up for a second time the same summer and did not get our usual suite we checked out who was staying there. We saw Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow coming out of the suite we generally stay in. Her use of the room (presumably with her husband) was the first thing I thought of when her husband was later caught with a hooker outside of Detroit.
