Reactions Round-up

The photographer who took the picture of the Palin family that was once posted here kindly asked us to remove the picture, and we did so. We apologize for using his picture without permission. - JR

(H/T The Radio Equalizer, SCSoxFan)

Here’s a quick round-up of some more reactions.

Ann Coulter is her usual brilliant self:

I’m confused by all the confusion among the chattering classes about Palin. I thought her press conference explained it very clearly – though she couldn’t put it precisely this way without sounding vain, but it’s obvious.

Even though she’s just a state governor, she’s a HUGE national star who is both sought after and attacked as if she is already a president (a Bush, not an Obama). But she basically can’t participate because she’s tethered to the governor’s office up in Alaska. Consequently, she has to fight with one hand tied behind her back and she also can’t go around the country campaigning for candidates and principles she believes in – because she’s governor and would be accused of neglecting the state.

Meanwhile, the Lt. Gov. is a great guy, so she’s leaving the state in good hands and now she can go on to be an even bigger star.

It’s a weird Washington insider perspective to be perplexed by what she’s doing. Contrary to Mark Sanford’s e-mails to his mistress, no one was really impressed with him; 99.99999999999999999% of Americans didn’t know who he was. Who is more influential: Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Bill O’Reilly, or Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford (before the fall)? As Palin said, God bless people who run for political office, but – and she didn’t say this part – she’s too big to be a lame-duck governor stuck dealing with fishing licenses in Anchorage right now.

She’ll be much bigger now and can play on the national stage without constantly setting off state ethics investigations by loons, parasites and liberals. None of this applied to McCain or Kerry – both of whom went back to the Senate – because their national campaigns diminished them. Palin’s national campaign made her a major star. As she said, she’s not retreating, she’s advancing in another direction.

Here’s Rush:



Mary Matalin said on CNN:

MATALIN: Well, I think it’s really brilliant, with two caveats, one being that there’s nothing else, ala the Sanford fiasco. There’s nothing else that we don’t know. If all that’s there is what we see right now, it’s brilliant.

And, secondly, that she has a plan and people have a plan to put up with the conventional wisdom, chatterati and the political class saying how stupid it is, because it’s brilliant.

On the substance, there’s the key economic issue — I know everyone says — thinks it’s health care, but it’s really energy. And she’s the queen of energy.

And the second big issue for 2012 will be the role of government. And she has a record of reform and ethics reform and making government smaller and reigning in spending — all those issues that are getting increasingly important as Barack Obama expands on his agenda.

So — and her delivery was incredible — a charis — a less charismatic person probably couldn’t pull it off. But as — as already referenced, she will be freed up and liberated in the way Mitt Romney is here to run around and raise money and get political chips by spending it and get political capital. And she is still raising the kinds of crowds and money that she always did.

We posted Levin’s take on Friday, but I love Levin so much that I will post it again:



The Anchoress writes:

...I am thinking Palin is doing something very remarkable, and it’s the sort of thing prisoners of war have to do, to survive.

John McCain has talked a little about what it took to survive 5 years as a POW. I recall him saying that survival meant understanding what you could not control, and what you could. I think that’s what Palin is doing. Her political career is, for now, out of control, largely due to both a malevolent media that cannot do her the very barest of courtesies by leaving her children out of their line of fire, and to the pissant little busybees who look for any excuse to file spurious charges at her. She wears a jacket on a cold day, and finds herself facing “ethics” charges because the manufacturer’s name was visible. There have been more than a dozen “ethics” violations charged to her, and all of them have been dismissed, as filed without basis by “ethical watchdogs.”

It’s tough to govern and not go broke when the other side has decided to nibble you to death – and to build up a “record of questionable ethics” against you while they do so. The left and the press, who one might characterize as “at war” with Palin and her family, have tossed together a mess of Palin narratives (she’s “stupid,” they’re “trailer-trash,” the daughters are “sluts,” she looks like a “slutty flight attendant,” they are cornpone, she is inept, she “can see Russia from her window” and oh, yeah, she’s really her son’s grandmother, and one of her “slutty” daughters got pregnant just a few weeks after giving birth to that retarded kid that everyone wishes she [or her daughter, winkwink] had aborted) and they have created an enormous battle-hill out of all of that.

And I suspect Sarah Palin has looked around and decided, no – she is not going to die on that hate-constructed hill. I think she’s going to do her thing, forge her own path by her own lights, and eventually head back into politics on her own damn hill – and with (one fervently hopes) a hum-dinger of a speech-writer.

One of the jobs of a believer -whether Christian or not- is to find meaning in what is going on around and within. I suspect Palin is finding meaning in the abuse she’s been handed. I suspect her interior strength and her interior narrative of faith, family and love of homeland are commingling into a strategy, based on that meaning; a strategy that will be broad in scope, takes the long-view and is played close to the vest.

Pam Geller writes:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced yesterday that she is resigning and will not seek a second term as governor. Many conservatives are characterizing this as an abdication of responsibility and a failure of will. Quin Hillyer wrote in the American Spectator that "Sarah Palin's resignation is an appalling dereliction of duty and a highly cynical move to set herself up for a presidential run for which she is manifestly unqualified."

I vehemently disagree. She did not quit. From what I saw of her speech before Fox inexplicably cut it off (after seven days of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage), this is not a woman who is retiring or "cutting and running," as Hillyer put it. She is getting into the fight to save America. Palin committed herself to fighting "for our state and our country, and campaign(ing) for those who believe in smaller government, free enterprise, strong national security, support for our troops and energy independence." Obama's treasonous presidency has made this struggle necessary. Palin, like all patriotic Americans, is shocked by what is happening. Obama is destroying this country. She knows it. We all know it. We need a leader.

Palin is that leader. On Friday she assumed the mantle. She delivered a campaign speech. She spoke on the eve of Independence Day about the sacrifices great Americans have made, and what our Founding Fathers fought and died for. Without naming Obama, she went after his disastrous policies, saying that "living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow," and noting that as governor she had "vetoed debt-ridden stimulus dollars." She believes in and wants to fight for free enterprise, small government and national security.

Mark Tapscott writes:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's announcement of her resignation cannot be read in terms of the conventional wisdom of politics - i.e. that she's getting out ahead of some damaging political revelation she knows is right around the corner, she's fed up with the constant personal attacks on her and her family, or she's running for president in 2012 and wants to be free of the constraints of office.

A close reading of her actual words in her announcement reveals otherwise. The key fact about Palin is that she is not a conventional politician. She actually means what she says, which is why her statement must be read in light of that fact, not that she has ulterior motives.

[...]

Palin is offended that liberal Democrats and their allies in the elite media have and will evidently continue manufacturing baseless but sensational accusations against her that require her and her staff to devote official time to responding in order to set the record straight. She sincerely believes Alaska should have a full-time governor, not one who is continually distracted by baseless ethics allegations that must be addressed.

And Palin is choosing to "turn a negative into a positive" by freeing herself to in effect be able to respond full-time to her critics and in the process build up like-thinking candidates and officials throughout America (don't miss the significance of her remark about such individuals in either party or of no party).

Put otherwise, Palin is embarking on an independent path in nationa politics that, if she is successful, will lead to a new third force. Not necessarily a third party, but definitely a populist insurrection that could reshape American politics for years to come. Does the Tea Party Protests movement come to mind?

Prisoners of conventional wisdom almost certainly will miss the significance of Palin's decision. But they've never understood why she struck such a powerful chord with everyday Americans in 2008, so we ought not be surprised that this announcement is completey beyond their ability to understand what is really happening.

Read the whole thing for all of them. They’re all good.