Thoughts on Gov. Sarah Palin

Friday afternoon while driving through Phoenix with Norm at the helm, I was shocked by the announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin’s resignation.   It was the last thing I expected to hear and a variety of thoughts and emotions quickly went through me.   At first I was stymied and then angry and then sad.   But as I heard her explain why she made the decision I became strangely excited.   Tears came to my eyes and I felt something very profound had just been announced.

Since the first time I heard her speak I have admired and been in awe of Gov. Palin.   She talks plainly about conservative ideals and a desire to lead us back to our roots of government by the people and for the people.   She is a standardbearer and someone people naturally want to rally behind.   We need people like that right now who stand for conservative principles and will not give up on what that means.   She’s not a quitter by any means and I can’t wait to see what she does next.   (Follow her on twitter at Twitter.com/AKGovSarahPalin to avoid the filter of state run media.)

For the past two days I’ve been looking for thoughts from other conservatives about Gov. Palin’s decision and what’s next for her.   Finally, I found someone who really gets her the way I do and was able to articulate that better than I could.   Believe it or not this fellow   Jude is a musician who appeared on the Hugh Hewitt radio program late last week to discuss Michael Jackson’s passing.   Here’s a few excerpts from what he wrote on Hugh’s blog:

“Sarah Palin is running a marathon.

…When I heard Old Man McCain had picked Sarah Palin for VP I shuddered.   Her talent and character don’t come along together very often, she had good work ahead of her in office, and going down with that ship was not what she needed.   Same with Jindal.   Yet, there I was at the convention, (probably with better seats than Duane, I’m just saying…) trading elbows with Andrew Breitbart as we declared our love for the most charismatic GOP’er since Reagan.   On the way home that night I was called by a musician friend who wanted my take on her, because she was intimidating as a new candidate.   I told him – and I’m not claiming any kind of prescience here, because it was plain to see – that now the race was on to define her.   It was the Media vs. the RNC, and we all knew who was going to win that one.   ‘Aww, no,’ I recall him saying, ‘ it isn’t like that.   You’re paranoid.”
Cue the Trig garbage, brutal magazine covers, NBC/SNL, etc.   Some of the smartest people I know have told me that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house…

As Hugh said on the air the other day while talking to Jim Geraghty,   “everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it’s not just enough to say, ‘I disagree with you,’; she has to be repudiated and crushed.”   And she almost has been. They said she was a fool.   They said she was a criminal.   They said she had had an affair.   They said Trigg wasn’t her child.   Now they’ll call her a quitter, and they’ll be wrong again.

…She’s no quitter.   She’s just running her own race.
Imagine the kitchen table conversation at the Palin house.   ‘Hey, would you guys like this stuff to stop for a while, and for Dad and I to have the option to fight back against it when does happen, and to fight for good people more often, at our own pace, on our own schedule?   Would you like it if I can be home more often but also do more for America?   Oh, and do you think I should be responsible and step aside as governor since the bad guys have made every day I remain in office more damaging to the state?’
‘Hell, yeah.’   (I like to think that one was Piper.)

Sarah Palin is the biggest star in politics after the sophist in the oval office, and Sarah Palin has been abandoned by too much of the Right.   Mitt Romney is a cyborg and probably has 2012 in hand already, which I think is great.   Love the guy, think we should be so lucky.   But how can the GOP and the RNC fail to defend and champion Palin?   She is a superstar media talent who’s natural charisma could light the sun.   Don’t listen to the garbage about how she hurt the ticket – that’s something Democrats tell themselves to sleep at night.   She is a major voice in the conservative movement, the most prominent female Republican, and on and on.   Is it so hard to defend her at parties that we have to say she’s finished, or that we never thought she could make it back anyway?   If she’s taking herself out of politics, then fine, we can let her be… but don’t bet on it.   Sanford has clearly taken himself off the board, but she’s securing and defending her place.   Palin has a remarkable killer instinct and she climbed the political ladder in a way no one expected.   She may very well be passing the ball because she believes it’s the right thing to do, but she’s also going to become a more effective national figure by doing so.   We might see more of her, not less, and if that’s the case, will the RNC want to help her?   More importantly, will it even know how?   I think it’s just as likely that she’s going to learn how to play the national media all by herself, and she may be better for it in the end.

And if I’m wrong and this is the beginning of the end of Palin’s political career?   Well, as I said at the top of the post, this race is called life, and no one could blame her for making sure she wins that one.”