Artwork by Zina Saunders
I can see how this would affect a person’s perspective… being plucked from obscurity in Wasilia and becoming a candidate to hold the second-most powerful seat in Government in the world. Kind of like being a roadie for Van Halen and being asked to fill in for Eddie at Wembley Stadium.
I am clearly not a Republican, but am weary of reading about how she “energizes the base“. Who is this base, exactly? And if Sarah Palin is their dream girl, just how in touch with the affairs of the modern world are they? Is she truly Rove with a Rosary?
A mastermind of journalism and politics who chooses to whine about the popular media, rather than manipulating it to rout out foes and causing it to feed upon itself? Hmm… I’m sure Karl isn’t losing too much sleep over his job security as GOP juggernaut.
The 2008 Presidential campaign clearly caught her out as what we could politely identify as “a bit of a rube” — unwise to the ways of the world, a passport holder since only 2006, plagued by accusations of corruption and scandal, and prone to.. um.. interesting usements of languagistics.
For the enjoyment of grammar geeks everywhere, here’s her entire press conference in all of its fingernails-on-a-chalkboard glory (pardon the audio at the beginning — it’s not your computer).
After this seemingly quixotic exit, the Washington Post said it quite nicely:
She stood at a makeshift lectern surrounded by the family that accompanied her along one of the more improbable arcs in modern American politics: from obscure small-town mayor to Sen. John McCain‘s running mate; from mother of five to tabloid sensation; and from making a much-noticed speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention to delivering the circuitous resignation speech yesterday at her waterfront home.
Vanity Fair asserts in the wildly entertaining article “It Came From Wasila” next month that she was trouble from the start. But her failed clamoring for the Vice Presidential Seat had more practical effects: she is mired in legal debts which her $125K/yr. salary will not cover, and faces declining popularity in her own state and across the US. In other words: her 15 minutes are just about done, folks.
So, as the Daily KOS asserts… she’s got to strike while the iron’s hot in order to maximize her returns on the Right-Wing Punditry circuit and, perhaps, to increase her profile in advance of what I could only assume is a widespread collective delusion among “the base” (which I infer to mean gun-toting ultra-conservative born-again Christian white supremacist NASCAR fans) that she could be a sincere candidate for president in 2012.
Her coronation would be a day that Democrats everywhere could celebrate, indeed, as her divisive politics would ensure another 4 years of The Obamathon. I have to think that if she continues her media assault on behalf of the base over the next few years without the benefit of expensive handlers and speechwriter that we’ll learn more and more about just how little she knows about subjects outside of hockey, oil pipelines, things she can see from her house, turkeys, birth control, and .. uh … yeah.
So, while Sarah herself might internalize this sudden resignation as her next Great Leap Forward, it might really just be about paying for the bills incurred during her Last Leap Forward. And that’s not so crazy, after all — by Sarah Palin’s standards it’s downright practical.
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