a farewell to Palin
I guess by making her announcement on one of the biggest News Dump Day of the year, the day before Independence Day Weekend, Sarah Palin foregoes the pontificating of the chattering class. The “A Team” on the Cable “News” networks are on vacation, and the “B Team” is probably pushed aside for various to be unwatched Patriotic Specials.
But there’s not too much commentary to give. What little I see is pretty obvious: “It’s hard to see how this helps a presidential run.” You think? That is the point, I gather. To speculate further, I sort of assume something is coming down the pike that would make that a moot point: is something about to blow up in her ethics investigation, perhaps? The wildest of the conspiracy theories regarding Trig’s birth on the verge of being proven true? I assume we’ll find out sooner or later, and probably sooner.
If it’s not too bad, I assume she has some sort of future on a conservative speakers’ circuit, and the type of cruise ship tour which smittened Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard gang that helped push Palin into her year in the political spot-light.
In the end, I’m left wondering what the year of Sarah Palin meant. She probably raised McCain’s vote percentage by giving a base something they could vote for, even as it negated the most intellectually honest nonideological line of attack against Obama (one year in the Senate before manuevering a Presidential run? Really?) and thus effectively capping his support somewhere below the 50 mark. What does it say that she had that base and how does one dice that item of Identity politics? My lingering impression is the SNL sketch which was an unaltered and unexaggerated enactment of her Katie Couric interview, none the worse for comedy. She now fades away. We no longer have Sarah Palin to kick around — unlike Nixon.