I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned here yet, honestly.
People have speculated virtually every possible reason. She’s planning for a 2012 bid, she doesn’t want the media circus surrounding her to affect Alaska, there’s a scandal about to hit, etc etc…
I just find it odd she announced it on a Holiday Weekend, don’t politicians usually save the announcements they want forgotten for these weekends? There’s also word of her Attorney looking into the option of suing media outlets for ‘defamation’ if they report that it’s probably due to a potential scandal (or something like that, I’m not clear on what her Attorney is doing exactly).
If she is planning for a 2012 bid, though, won’t this just hurt her chances more? Stepping down because the ‘liburl media’ was mean to her and her family probably isn’t going to cut it for a national bid. At least, I’d hope it wouldn’t.
Amusing this happens on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s week off.
Sarah Palin is doomed whichever way she goes. By quitting early, despite having achieved nothing, the stink of her short term as governor won’t be as fresh come election day.
If she could sue for defamation, so could every other politician. She gave up that right as soon as she entered the public forum and stopped being a private citizen.
Oh, she can definitely still sue for defamation. She hasn’t given up that right at all. She just has a much higher burden to prove when suing for defamation. She would need to show that the stories are intentionally false or recklessly disregard the truth; essentially, some malice must be shown in the story.
984’s right about the defamation thing. She could sue, but she’d have a much larger burden to prove if she did. That’s how it works for people in the public spotlight. (Finally, Business Law comes in handy!)
I do remember that Carol Burnett did something like that in 1981 for suing the National Enquirer for for libel after the tabloid newspaper described her alleged public drunkenness, supposedly with Henry Kissinger. And she ended up with about $800k from that case.
By the same token, I don’t know if Palin really threw her Down Syndrome Baby, Bristol, or the middle child who no one cares about except David Letterman. Appearing with them is one thing (image of the Classic American Family, Obama did the same thing), but I don’t readily recall her ever throwing them into the spotlight saying “Here, here is my family. Do with them what you will.”
I like Sarah Palin; she could “actually see” Imaqliq – my grandpa’s walrus hunting grounds, while he was stationed in Chukotka during his Red Army stint – from Wasilla.
She “knows” my people.
From what I’ve gathered from various news sources it sounded like there was infighting between Palin, the Republican party, the McCain campaign, and various Alaskan political groups. She’s burned a lot of bridges in the past few months and revealed herself as a paper tiger. She’s pretty much unqualified for any major elected position, it’s almost like a weird dream that she made it as far as she did.
She could still sue, but what the media reports on Obama would be completely irrelevant to the case. I’m not sure why you would even bring that up.
Actually Letterman wasn’t even referring to the middle daughter, Sarah Palin herself made it about here and used her as political ammo when the joke was very obviously about Bristol, who Sarah also threw into the spotlight numerous times and still uses for political clout. She also uses Trigg to look like she supports special education a lot more than she does. shrug
The Republican party needs to reach out to more moderates. John McCain’s daughter even says so though half the party attacks her because of it, because she doesn’t embrace the new extremism.
She could still sue, but what the media reports on Obama would be completely irrelevant to the case. I’m not sure why you would even bring that up.
Well, specifically what Fox reports on Obama (He’s “a Terrorist, a Muslim, he doesn’t have a birth certificate, he’s not American, he stole the election through voter fraud, he hangs around with murderers and terrorists, he caused the economic crash and he authored the Bush bailout, etc”) which tends to be blatantly false. But as another news article pointed out, trying to silence the media for reporting on rumours (and stating they are only rumour) is political suicide.
People think she’s readying herself for the 2012 presidential election but…
wouldn’t stepping down like she did make her look really bad? I’m not exactly on top of everything political, but her stepping down in the middle of her term says to me that she isn’t very dependable at all.
To think that she could’ve been VP…
Department of Law is pretty funny though. Perhaps it’s better that she did resign. I mean, shouldn’t a governor at least know the different departments in the Government? Guess they set the bar low for becoming Governor over there in Alaska.
The world needs more Trigs.