Palin: No One will value it,
but here is my opinion.

Sarah Palin held her resignation news conference one week ago, but I just read another columnist's examination of "why she quit". Being genetically disposed to be a motormouth, I can be silent no longer.

Some years ago I knew a young lawyer who was very idealistic and very disturbed with the political turn of events in his state. He decided to enter politics to make things better. He filed as a candidate for a seat in the Missouri Legislature's House of Representatives. The law firm where he was employed took little interest in his candidacy. Some friends of mine who were in the advertising business helped him write copy for flyers which he personally distributed door to to door.

When he was elected, the seniors in his law firm called him into a meeting and spelled out the agenda they wanted him to follow as a legislator. It was entirely opposite of what this young man had in mind and he refused. Eventually his employment situation became untenable and he resigned the job.

In the legislature, he confronted one stone wall after another. I no longer remember the time span it all took, or how many terms he served. But one day he reached the conclusion that there was nothing constructive he could accomplish in the state legislature, and at the end of the term, he walked away.

Most of us Conservatives yearn for politicians who truly care about their community, their country. We wrongly conclude that all politicians are egotistic maniacs, stumbling through their terms, concentrating only on being reelected. That's too bad. There are still people like the young, idealistic lawyer who try, but party hacks and special interest pros wear them down, one way or another.

Sarah Palin certainly is an idealist. Her entire public record proves that conclusively. She saw and struggled against corruption with no regard for party lines. She was successful in all of her Alaska endeavors. But when she entered the national scene, she was met by the real pros at the politics of personal destruction. Some crafty mind among them discovered that you could completely hogtie a political office holder by simply filing ethic complaints, one after the other. The law rightly requires that complaints be investigated, no matter how frivolous they may seem on the surface.

In the span of six months or so, Palin came to the realization that she, personally, had wasted a half million dollars - enough to put all of her children through college - defending herself against the false charges. Worse, the state she loved and wanted to protect, had spent four times that amount. Never mind that all charges were proven false and were dismissed. She, and those around her, knew that the charges would continue. Why would they stop? They were taking their toll, and it cost nothing to lodge them.


In Palin's case, she saw that the problem was her personal popularity on the national political stage. At her side was a Lieutenant Governor who shared her political ideals and goals. With no apparent national political ambitions, he would be of little interest to the destroyers. She could remove herself from the picture, put a stop to the financial bleeding of her family and her state, and still see her objectives for clean state government realized. She had only one choice.

Would resignation destroy her political career? Perhaps. Would it allow her to continue to pursue her goal of making a change in the political climate of the country she loved? Absolutely! And that was her true ambition.

For this, I feel a great personal debt of gratitude to Sarah Palin. Do I think she'll run for some higher political office? I hope so - we need people like Sarah Palin. But that decision is hers to make. In the meantime, if she appears in my area in support of some candidate or another, you can bet I will turn out to hear her speak, and I will vote for the candidate she supports.

As a postscript, I might add that a similarly evil tactic was used against against Mitt Romney. When Mitt ran for president he was already out of office, so his enemies needed a different line of attack. Romney didn't have a lot of vulnerabilities. But, Mitt was not a Catholic, or a Baptist, or a follower of any of the other heavily populated religions. He was a Mormon. Nobody had any bad information about Mormons, but their numbers were fewer. Perhaps it would be possible to stir up feelings of prejudice against Mitt, because of his religion.

To his great credit, and unlike Barack Obama who quickly deserted his church when it became politically expedient to do so, Mitt Romney stuck by his religious beliefs. Why? Because he really believed them!

Is religion what defeated Mitt Romney? We'll never know. But we do know that every little impediment can diminish the chance of winning a race, be it swimming, bike racing, even a horse race... or a political campaign.

UPDATE:

When I wrote this, I titled it "Palin: My 2¢ Worth", thinking, "no one will value it, but here is my opinion." When I looked at the post, I thought it was a pretty dumb title - one that everyone might use. To check that, I did a Google search for "Palin: My 2¢ Worth", and Google came up with 46,500,000 pages. To be fair, not all were about Palin... some were just about 'My 2¢ Worth'. Aren't people funny?