(h/t David)
The Patron Saint of the GOP Ronald Reagan had one unalterable law of politics, his Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak poorly of your fellow Republicans.
And for those of us well-practiced in the art of reading between the lines of Conservo-speak, it's quite humorous to see the lengths the GOP bobbleheads will go to spin Sarah Palin's cutting and running in a positive light.
Soon-to-be successor Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell tries to spin this as a cost-saving measure, as the state has been paying dearly for the cost of all the ethics investigations. Now the fact that people feel it necessary to actually conduct ethics investigations seems to matter less than the cost of them. Karl "I belong in jail" Rove finds Palin's move "perplexing," worrying that it sends a message that you can drive an executive out of office through ethics investigations. Um, isn't that what your party tried to do for eight years with Clinton, Karl? I don't think Palin is the precedent here.
But former Arkansas governor and current FNC pundit Mike Huckabee all but calls Palin a wimp for her "risky strategy", claiming that he had it far tougher in Arkansas than she has it in Alaska, and her actions will do nothing to keep her and her family from being chased by the media:
WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, almost every politician is on the firing line. You may not have been to the degree as governor of Arkansas that Sarah Palin was once she achieved national prominence. But what about this argument, “I’m doing this for my state because the attacks against me are getting in the way?”
HUCKABEE: Well, if that had been the case for me, I’d have quit about my first month, because I was a Republican governor in a state where 89 percent of my legislature were Democrats.
I had constant ethics complaints filed against me, even by newspaper editors, and a lot of it was because if they can’t attack you on policy, what they do -- they just absolutely bombard you with personal attacks and keep you tied up in court, make you hire lawyers. Been there, done that.
Arkansas was a tough political environment, period, even tougher for a Republican, and one of the things you have to do is just decide, “Look, they’re not going to, you know, chase me out.”
Now, what they do -- they throw all this stuff at you, and then they say, “Oh, there’s a pattern of ethical issues.” Actually, what the pattern is is a pattern of phony charges being filed by the opposition party.
The danger that Sarah Palin faces -- and let me be very quick to tell you, in the way of full disclosure, I’m a Sarah Palin fan. I like her personally. I like her points of view. I think she’s right on the issues. The challenge that she’s going to have is that there will be people who say, “Well, look, you know, if they chase you out of this, it won’t get any easier for you at other levels of the stage.”
While neither pundit will actually admit that Palin's bizarrely rambling and incoherent speech on Friday was a boneheaded move on her part, both do admit that it raised more questions than answers and in national politics, that can be the kiss of death, as her ill-fated campaign for the VP slot showed.
HUCKABEE: Well, it’s a risky strategy, and nobody knows whether it’s going to pay off or not. And even if she did get out, primarily because of the -- a feeling of being chased, that’s not going to stop if she continues in politics.
The only way that stops is for her to completely exit the stage and the spotlight. And on that point, I totally agree with Karl.
I think the one thing that I wondered about tactically was hastily calling a news conference that ended up raising more questions than it did answer them.
And my political mentor, Ed Rollins, the other day on his radio show brought that up, that you don’t call a press conference that creates questions. You call one to resolve them.
No one could have predicted that Palin was completely out of her depth for national politics, could they?
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