Goodbye to Sarah Palin
As one The Eldest’s friends wrote: "Sarah Palin. Remember that name. At some point, you’ll need it for a trivia contest." Sarah now has taken her leave, and Suzy Khimm has a good article to send her off:
When Sarah Palin abruptly announced that she was planning to leave office, it was clear whom she blamed for her early exit. "I wish you’d hear MORE from the media of your state’s progress and how we tackle Outside interests—daily—SPECIAL interests that would stymie our state," she said in her July 3 resignation speech, which she later posted on her website. Blasting her adversaries for paralyzing the Alaska governor’s office with charges of "frivolous ethics violations," Palin and her representatives accused these unnamed "Outside interests" of harming her ability to govern after returning from the presidential campaign. "There were some complaints that were filed under pseudonyms that we believe came from down in the lower 48," Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, told Fox News. "There is a connection to the Democratic Party in the lower 48."
There’s no doubt that Alaska’s state government has been paralyzed since Palin’s return, with anger and frustration emanating from both the governor’s office and the state legislature. All of Palin’s major bills failed to pass this year’s first 90-day session. But conversations with both Republican and Democratic legislators reveal that Palin’s inability to get anything done has little to do with the media attacks the Alaska governor claims drove her from office. The lawmakers say it has more to do with how national exposure changed her, moving her much further to the right than she had been and making her nearly impossible to work with. And state Republicans seem just as incensed about it as the Democrats.
Before Palin left the state to become John McCain’s running partner, she cultivated a good, if not exactly chummy, working relationship with Alaskan Democrats by pushing for an oil-tax increase and ethics reform. And state Republicans embraced Palin as the new face of a party that had been tarnished by scandal-ridden politicians like Ted Stevens. But upon returning to Juneau last fall, "she managed to alienate most of the 60 members of [the Alaska] House and Senate," says Larry Persily, an aide to state Republican Representative Mike Hawker. "It wasn’t a matter of burning bridges—she blew them up."
Palin made it clear that she wasn’t going to back away from the hard-line conservative ideology that had propelled her to national prominence—and her first high-profile target was
