Key reason Palin gave for quitting may be false
Published: July 9, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
Just why did Sarah Palin quit the governor’s chair of Alaska?
It was abrupt, unexpected and hailed as part of a political effort to position herself for the presidency.
Palin asserted that the reason for her departure was that her presence forced the state to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend her from frivolous ethics complaints, instead of devoting the much-needed resources to cops, teachers and roads.
But as it turns out, the money for Palin’s lawyers would have been allocated anyway, and that the lawyers would have been paid even if they hadn’t been defending Palin. The information was disclosed to Plum Line’s Amanda Erickson by Palin spokesperson David Murrow.
Murrow revealed that $1.9 million had been allocated for state lawyers, part of which was used to defend the governor from lawsuits.
“But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter,” blogger Greg Sargent wrote, “that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing.”
Palin’s ethics complaints, Murrow said, are “just distracting them from other duties.”
“In other words,” Sargent adds, “while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.”
To one commentator, writing in the Los Angeles Times, Palin’s hastily arranged departure speech had echoes of Nixon’s “farewell” from politics after losing the race for governor in California in 1962.
“I leave you gentleman now and you will write it,” Nixon quipped. “You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you.”
“Like Nixon, Palin seemed fraught with emotion,” the LA Times writers added. “Like Nixon, she seemed angry at her critics.”
Nixon went on to win the presidency in 1968 and re-election in 1972, before resigning under a cloud of scandal in 1974.
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oh god, does that mean failin is following the role model of nixon?
lord have mercy on our souls.
As much as I truly dispise nixon, he at least was able to speak clear sentances formulated via clear thought (even though he had a diseased mind and zero ethics).
failin is just a comical version of nixion. (if that is even possible. nixon was pretty cartoony himself)
Sen. John McCain put us a heartbeat away from a retard. Does this mean McCain is not as patriotic as advertised? Or does this mean the Office of President can be managed by anyone as it is a figure head position staffed by puppets?
This bitch lied on the campaign trail, and she lied again here, and she’ll go to her grave a miserable wretched fucking liar. So it goes with the Republican’s sweetheart: they revere a good liar.
Her followers hear that and think AND SAY this:
That she, PERSONALLY, had to come up with $500,000.00 to pay lawyers to fend off harassing law suits.
She knows exactly how to phrase things… she knows her audience.
As with the Bush/Cheney crime cabal, anything Palin sez is obviously a lie. There’s no (legal) money/glory in Alaskan politics, and another 18 months of Governorship would bring more ethical/criminal allegations. So Palin thinks, “Gee, if only we could make a bunch of money now writing a book and doing the lecture circuit … that would keep us rich and in the public eye for years … instead of languishing amidst indictments above the 60th Parallel! The VP/Prez spot is now out of reach, but being RNC chair or a powerful bureaucratic appointment in the next GOP admin is not out of the question — since the rethugs must cater to their rabid religious base to survive. And Palin’s just the ticket for that.
FAILIN’ PALIN’S BAILIN’ AGAIN ! I keep telling you folks, and no one listens, that Sarah was walking the “Old Appalachian Trail” with SC. Gov. mark Sanford. Think about it! He chaired all those Republickin Governors Conventions that Sarah attended religiously, with him, at taxpayer expense. Sanford has admitted “crossing the line” with others while seeing his Latina trail hiker from Buenos Aires. He has been hiking with a bunch of Republicker women and line crossers. Sarah Failin just wants to be out of the limelight before the old line crosser from S.C. names her as his trail hiking line crossing companion.
At least Sanford isn’t hiking trails in public bathrooms this time!
The Wasilly Hillbilly give false reasons for quitting? Oh, NO! Say it isn’t SO!!!!
I wouldn’t expect anything less BUT lies from the State of Alaska’s Quitter-In-Chief.
The reason she resigned was altruistic. It would be better for the state and the citizenry if someone else was governor.
I doubt she has an altruistic bone in her body.
More likely, she knows there is more to the story of her corruption and greed and she wants to avoid facing the music. Maybe the rumors of her and “hot dog” sanford having a litlle fling are true.
If she were truly concerned about the dumb asses that elected her I don’t think she would have accepted the VP spot in the election.
Sarah is only concerned for herself.
this may be the answer to that age old question, “what do you get when you cross a skank republican governor with a unfaithful douchebag republican governor?” a retard is of course the only answer.
Has this woman ever told the truth about anything? I agree with atilla, I suspect another scandal’s about to hit the fan, and it probably involves Mark Sanford (the other Republican attention-whore who just won’t go away). My personal prediction is that Todd has a DNA test done which proves that Brig or Sprig or whatever the Littlest Blob is called, is Sanford’s love-child (although it’s hard to imagine that two such hateful narcissists could possibly have anything to do with love).
“(although it’s hard to imagine that two such hateful narcissists could possibly have anything to do with love).”
How about just plain, old, hot monkey sex?
Shocked, I am, absolutely shocked. Palin, the paragon of truth, virtue and THE American Way (there is only one), would lie. What is the world coming to?
The GOP will still nominate her in 2012. They can’t help themselves.
The comparisons with Nixon are a stretch as he was a smart lawyer with a long resume in 1962. Still, the notion of Palin 2016 makes one worry. We are a dumber, coarser lot than we were in the ’60s. Authors, intellectuals and jazz musicians were regulars on talk shows, and debate was serious - just see Klassic Krusty! Cable news now is like a video game version of that intellectual climate, where you score points by being the loudest, dumbest and most outrageous. Can you weep on cue? Triple bonus score!
Palin is a concern because Americans could definitely get fooled again.
Face it, Sarah…It’s over.
How can anyone still consider her political leadership material?
Someone who doesn’t complete an important job commitment because the heat becomes too much doesn’t exactly make themselves attractive candidates for jobs requiring greater commitment and a wider spotlight.
Maybe now she has the time to become an actual soccer mom instead of just posing as one.
Palin lies! What else did you expect?
Let’s assume that she is telling the truth. What exactly did $500,000 worth of legal fees protect her from? That’s a steep legal tab; felony grade.
She’ll get a six-figure book deal — with a guaranteed NYTimes bestseller list position due to her right wingnut fundamental base. Then tour the country doing speaking engagements at 25K a pop. Then she’ll get a show on Fox as the anti-RachelMaddow resident GOP bimbo. All the while staying in the public eye just in case there’s another political opportunity in the future (as the American sheeple have a very short memory).
“the money would have been allocated anyway…”
John B., where do you think that money would have been “allocated” from? Tax dollars, you dolt. This is one reason why Sara is getting more popular.
I am a liberal person, and I do not agree with Sara on issues, but if the Democrats (and Republicans) don’t stop these ridiculous personal attacks and political smear jobs, Sara will be more popular than ever.
And if you haven’t been watching the news lately, many pundits are now defending her, especially women on both sides of the aisle.
So keep it up stupid dems, the Jane Hamshers and the Keith Olbermanns, and the Rachel Madows and the Stephanie Millers and the Chris Matthews… you overdid it and now she probably will be the wild card candidate in the next election. You are CREATING her as a viable anti-YOU…
And, if Obama keeps screwing up, she will either win the election or enable a republican to win by being a viable third party protest vote, like Ross Perot, only the result will be not electing Barry to a second term.
Way to go, Dems, thanks a lot. Best advice is to stick to the issues. There is a lot of important stuff to fix in a hurry.
T-girl, These people wouldn’t know the truth under any circumstances. Their lives are spent spinning that giant spinning wheel and where it stops, nobody knows. It’s all part of being a republiKKKon, “do as I say, not as I do” politics.
“And if you haven’t been watching the news lately, many pundits are now defending her, especially women on both sides of the aisle.” You need to turn the channel off of Fox Entertainment. Any news on Fox is a “republiKKKon talking ” point, nothing more, they don’t do the “news”. I don’t do Fox so I have not seen any women defending “quitter” Palin.
You need to e mail the republiKKKon party and tell them to stick to the issues because there is a lof of important “stuff” to fix in a hurry. They are the NO-NO party, NO leadership, NO new ideas, NO morals, NO ethics.
tropicgirl…..apparently spends a little too much time in the sun. Palin is a pathological lying opportunist. Anyone with an IQ of normal or above will see thru this pathetic woman.
Palin quit because “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” She enjoyed the attention, and is very competitive so was happy to win the job, but when she found herself in a job with “actual responsibilities” (remember the RNC convention speech?) for which she was not qualified and which were just exposing her incompetence, she bailed. Does this surprise anyone? There are people everywhere (run into them in business all the time) who can strut and brag and fool people into thinking their self-confidence is justified by ability, then have to figure out how to move on before their true worthlessness is exposed.
I am getting pretty tired for what passes as news these days. What is going on in Iran, China, etc? I have been ff’ding thru the ad nauseum reports about MJ as well. Goodbye sp, I can’t say that I’ll miss you. Heck, I didn’t have any idea what ideas she has been trying to share, since she arrived in the national spotlight.
She is not hard to figure out. She is transparent as can be. It is all about Sarah. And when the going gets tough, she quits, hoping to move on to a better gig.
When anyone asks a question, however innocently, that exposes her incompetence, she says they are unfair and out to get her. When you can’t even answer questions that a fairly sharp high school student could answer, you shouldn’t be on the national stage.
Palin is a narcissist and from what I can tell via bio notes on her, she’s spent most of her life doing whatever SHE deems necessary to feather her own nest at others’ expense (Alaskan taxpayers/John McCain’s campaign machine) and keep as much attention as possible on her to feed her bottomless ego.
She has used her children ruthlessly in the media, “fakes” religious piety (even letting a witch hunting preacher pray over her in that nutbag church), and didn’t seem to have any problem with other peoples’ money when it came to the highly expensive make up, clothes, shoes, etc., she got during the McCain campaign purchased via GOP funds.
She is ever more irksome because she’s a fraud who wants to be given so much for having done very little. Typical entitlement mentality found — surprisingly — in the GOP rather than from with the Democratic Party where the so-called and denigrated welfare poor are said to congregate.
My personal observation, if I may digress here a moment from Palin, is that the rich are the ones that always seem to have their hands out. They want everything at discount, or for free. They don’t want to pay taxes, they want special attention. They want special seating, perks, benefits and service. Then the GOP variety points the finger at welfare recipients saying that all they want is a free ride.
The something for nothing or very little describes the narcissism of Sarah Palin. The narcissist will claim all manner of special powers, intelligence, talents, qualities, etc., but when probing beneath the surface, it’s quickly apparent that there are no qualifications and no special abilities.
The lying is part and parcel of this personality type.
It isn’t Palin’s so-called “beliefs” that bother me so much as her false, dishonest, grasping self I find disgusting.
Palin, bailin’ wailin’ railin’, sailin’ failin’ ailin, vailin’ mailin’ nailin her own coffin.
Just knowing that anyone even thinks about her in any way remotely connected with the presidency makes my liver quiver. She’s an illiterate, incoherent screwball without an ethical bone in her quasi-religious, beauty pageant body.
It would be nice if most people’s religiosity had anything at all to do with true ethical principles and some kind of genuine spiritual aspiration, that is, something beyond a hope of someday standing in front of a comic-book-like, white-bearded old man on a white throne they actually conceive of as being God. Their concept of ethics belongs in the same category as their comic-book idea of God. That’s why in practice they don’t demonstrate anything like ethical behavior
It’s also why they can bend “truth” any way they like. That’s what they already do with their religion. If the cognitive dissonance between reality and their religion is so great, how can we expect anything less than an egregious cognitive dissonance between what they say and what they do?
Brief addendum to last post:
To qualify as a religious fundamentalist, you need to have an infinite capacity for self-deception and for simultaneously entertaining mutually incompatible ideas without the slightest inkling of self-contradiction or inconsistency anywhere.
Fact is, there are just so many stupid, vapid, ignorant and anti-intellectual people in this country that Palin still has a following! It does blow one’s mind and along with the lack of a single-payer health care system, kinda makes us the laughing stock of the industrialized world, We are big goofs and keep electing giant assholes to political positions. The huge Republican Asshole party, like those who love their Sarah Palin, belong in psych wards.
I recall reading somewhere recently that Levi was writing a tell-all book about his experience with the Palins. Considering how he was publicly raked over the coals by Palin….well, let’s just say he might be looking for a little pay back by revealing some behind-the-scene truths.
Sarah quit the oil and gas energy commision after one year because she wasnt having fun and she didnt want to become bitter..Anyone who has so little value on animals lives is scarey,,Last interview she did killing fish, thanksgiving, killing turkeys, bearskin on back of couch, gassing baby wolves for money polar bears etc..The racist in her crowd shouting lynching obama..This lady is mean.
You think there is something NOT “bogus” with “fishy-pants?
Nixon lost an election, he wasn’t driven out of office because his spouse abused the power of his office or because he had so many ethics complaints filed against him that he was unable to carry out his duties.
My guess is that the other shoe is about to drop. There’s more s— about to hit the fan and she’s getting out of Dodge before it does.
Leaving office before your term has ended because your ethics are in question is hardly a recommendation for being presidential candidate, let alone winning an election.
The fact that people are even willing to imagine such an outcome is the result of trauma induced by 8 years of Bush.
I think there is some reason, that we do not know about, that caused Sarah Palin to abruptly resign from her position as Governor.