Here come the red and blue lights behind her:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/07/03/alaska-governor-palin-to-resign-in-weeks.aspxMaybe the USA will get yet another swing at an Alaskan politician?
Run, Sarah, run! Take your state-issued check and get your passport!
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Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has announced that she is stepping down as that state's governor in a matter of weeks.
From Alaska CBC Affiliate KTVA:
At an 11:00 a.m. press conference today, Governor Sarah Palin announced that she would not seek a second term as governor. The governor continued, saying that by the end of the month she would resign from the governorship.
“I’m not seeking re-election,” Palin told a news conference at which she said she would transfer authority to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell.
Palin ran as John McCain's vice-presidential running mate and is seen by many Republicans as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012. Palin's term as governor, her first, does not end for another year.
“We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time,” she said.
Palin said her decision came after much “prayer and consideration.” She did not want to waste time on “political blood sport” and cited public criticism of her actions and her family since the 2008 campaign.
In recent months Palin has faced numerous scandal allegations and high-profile media scuffles, most notably with talk show host David Letterman over a joke about Palin's daughter.
Vanity Fair's Todd S. Purdum also wrote this massive feature on Palin. Which has this amazing line, among others:
Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.
Talking Points Memo adds their two-cents and highlights this amazing basketball reference from Palin:
And she wholly blamed the national press, saying they were creating national distractions that cost the state money. Palin said: "You are naive if you don't see a full-court press on the national level, picking apart a good point guard."
Politico's Mike Allen is tweeting quotes from Palin's emotional press conference
Pundits have also begun to speculate on Palin's future:
Politico's GOP watcher Ben Smith says that leaving the Alaska Governor's mansion allows Palin to bang the drum more effectively for the Republicans, something that the floundering GOP needs from one of their remaining stars.
Leaving office at the end of next year, the former vice presidential hopeful will be able to travel the country more freely without facing the sort of repeated ethics inquiries she’s been fending off since returning to Alaska earlier this year.
CNN adds a bit more to the speculation:
"She thinks she has accomplished goals she has set forward," one of the sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. "She sees what a positive influence she has had on people's lives from traveling the country in the last year."
The Post's David Frum argues that getting Palin to help the Republicans would actually be a bad thing for the party:
Palin evokes a devoted response from a large following. In the mysterious soup of motives that sustains her supporters, enthusiasm for effective governance does not seem a very major ingredient. But you'd think they would at least care whether she could campaign competently. Purdum argues intensely that she cannot - that a Palin candidacy would be the greatest self-inflicted disaster since George McGovern or Barry Goldwater
