Palin: ‘Politically speaking, If I die, I die’
Published: July 7, 2009
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin says she’s not a quitter, she’s a fighter, but adds that, politically speaking, “if I die, I die. So be it.“
The Alaska governor spoke in taped interviews on ABC, NBC and CNN broadcast Tuesday morning.
She told CNN that “all options are on the table” for her future.
But told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she recognizes she might not have political staying power after her surprise resignation Friday, which came just as she had been expected to elevate her national profile ahead of a possible 2012 GOP presidential run.
“I said before ... ‘You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it,‘“ she said.
Speaking in fishing waders from the town of Dillingham, Palin said her administration has been paralyzed by fending off frivolous lawsuits.
“I’m not going to take the comfortable path. I’m going to take the right path for the state,“ she said of her resignation, which she characterized as a matter of progressing in an unconventional way.
“That caught people off guard. ... It’s out of the box and unconventional. That’s what we are as Alaskans and certainly how I am as a public servant.“
Palin said she doesn’t think she needs a title to affect “positive change,“ but added that she can’t see herself being totally out of public service.
Palin is returning to the public eye four days after her bombshell announcement, albeit in a place far removed from the glare of the national media: in a remote fishing village 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Palin was scheduled to appear in Kotzebue to sign a bill designed to bring public safety officers to small towns. Kotzebue, a town of about 3,000 people, is 550 miles northwest of Anchorage and lies on a spit of sand at the end of a peninsula.
There has been speculation that she has some legal issue that is not yet known to the public. But her lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that she has no legal problems whatsoever, and simply is tired of the hostile political climate, legal bills and other distractions.
“She is leaving now because I think she believes that she has become the issue, rightly or wrongly, with all these ethics complaints and with the issues involving the Legislature, the combativeness they’ve been demonstrating toward her since she returned from the campaign,“ Thomas Van Flein said.
“I think she believes it’s in the best interest of the state to progress forward, for her to move on to other issues.“
Palin has become a lightning rod for partisan politics in Alaska since her return from the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain selected her as his running mate for the GOP ticket. She has racked up an estimated $500,000 in legal bills defending the flurry of ethics complaints, including one filed Monday that alleges she is violating ethics law by taking per diem payments when she stays in her Wasilla home instead of the governor’s mansion in Juneau.
In addition, her relationship with Democrats in the state Senate — once among her staunchest allies — deteriorated in the last session.
At the state Capitol in Juneau, the “Time to Make a Difference” clock that counted the time left in Palin’s term was taken down from the wall outside her office. And people from around the country called up her office to inquire about the situation, as did a few cruise ship tourists who made the trek to the Capitol.
The young woman at the desk outside Palin’s office was busy answering phones.
“Yes, she is getting swamped with e-mails,“ the woman tells one caller. “Yes, they do get forwarded to the appropriate person.“
“Unfortunately, we are having a back load of e-mails so it will take some to get a response,“ she tells another.
Where is she? Why is she stepping down? When is her last day? Why so soon?
The tour guide tried to politely answer the questions for the tourists when she could, but for the most part had no answers.
Some of the visitors left Palin messages in a guest log.
“Sarah — Please Stay!“ one person wrote.
Kathy Waldo-Gilbert, a registered Democrat from Iowa who was on her honeymoon in Alaska, said she was especially disappointed because she believes that Palin’s early departure from the governor’s job will make it harder for other women who want to be taken seriously in high-profile positions. Waldo-Gilbert voted Republican for the first time in last year’s presidential election.
“When things get hard, you stick around,“ she said.
Erika Fagerstrom, executive residential manager at the governor’s mansion, said Palin and her family will be missed. Even though Palin lived most of the time at her home in Wasilla, she spent “quite a bit” of time at the stately columned mansion near the capitol building, she said.
“We are sad to see her go. They are a great family,“ she said.
Palin will be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who has announced he will seek to retain the office in the 2010 election.
State Rep. John Harris, a former House speaker and Republican from Valdez, announced Monday that he’s preparing to file paperwork with state election officials in a bid for governor.
___
AP Writer Mary Pemberton contributed to this report from Juneau.
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Reader Reactions
Thanks Rob, you are funny!
Nice bad golf analogy. Good to see I got you worked up. Last word
Sticks and stone boys and girls, sticks and stones! robmo I suggest you switch to a different wedge for your chip shots, cuz you sound like your in the deep S##T or ruff or something!
Good luck with your therapy for your problems!
Wow JOB sounds like your entire life is just someone setting you up to fail. My words equate to my thought which equates to opinion, didn’t anyone ever teach you about personal accountability or is luck all there is in your universe? Your opinions about government seem to align you with anarchists, which for the record are people I have little problem with, but your obvious mentality leans more towards militias which I do have a problem with.
The PRACTICE of abstinence works.
( robmo35 ) See, just like the guy in Chicago you taught me something. Yes I have a chip in my shoulder about what is going on in our government. That’s what started this dialogue. I believe both the left and right are out of control. Better yet just call it what it is, the GOVERNMENT as a whole is out of control so thanks for enlightening me on that because that’s why I logged on about Palin in the first place! Just like the Obama article and their still talking about Kool-Aid over there! To funny!
To give an opinion, my God given and American right!
You also taught me that if I answer your question truthfully, you just want to twist words around because you didn’t like the answer! I never said anything was a prerequisite for disaster, that’s just wrong and they are your own words and not an opinion. I gave an example like you asked for. Besides that gentleman in Chicago invited me to his plant. He did listen to my advice and raised his prices; it was his quality that got his tit in a ringer. The company awarded the business charged 3 times as much at my advice and had better quality.
I also believe I stated how blessed I was to have worked with so many people much smarter than me. I learn something new every day, even by only answering your question truthfully.
Its funny how the RTD let’s the fine people of Richmond all talk politics’ and then it turns into some of the funniest S#*T I have ever heard. I’m glade I am at least open minded to the fact there are smarter people out there than me. Too bad some of the other RTD bloggers can’t admit to the same.
Good luck with your chip shots, I like using a sand wedge from a 100 yards in.
JB its fun to have a chip on your shoulder isn’t it? Seriously though your examples just sounds like people who didn’t follow your advice, and while I agree that simply having an MBA does not insure good performance, your making it sound like having one is a prerequisite for disaster, and that simply isn’t true.
( robmo35 ) I thought this article was dead.
Over the last 7 to 10 years, I would have to make a list from Europe to Massachusetts, New York State, New Jersey, Baltimore, Charlotte area, Atlanta, Chicago, St Louise Tennessee, Kentucky and yes Richmond.
So the last MBA I was associated with that trashed 100’s of thousands of dollar was in the fall of last year. It did not close the company down. He moved on from that job a month later and was promoted in the process. The new company didn’t know of the issue, timing I guess and a MBA maybe? Nice guy but it left a lot of crap behind, but it’s all good.
I believe it’s very simple, you just shouldn’t judge a book by its cover or The University they attended or didn’t attend.
The last major closings, South Carolina, North Carolina and Richmond. Very smart people, MBA’s but boy did they trash some fine companies simply because they didn’t understand the basic business structure of the given company. In part to the musical chair game companies play now by reassigning all the smart folk into a different position every 6 to 24 months.
However the most common factor in all the cases, they didn’t have a good handle on, “ NO CLUE” of the basic numbers. RMC, overhead, the necessary break even and preferred margin. It’s been a great education for me.
The most interesting one was in Chicago, when the gentleman closed the door and asked me how to make a particular contract successful. Supper nice guy, but because of the basic’s we reviewed I burst his bubble and told him how much his company was off.
I figured somewhere around 1 million dollar in the red for the first 6 months of the contract. I was there because I supplied product to him for this contract and he needed my company to lower his purchasing price. NOT!
I could have given him my product and he would have lost 800 thousand instead! He called three months later and told me they lost their backsides and broke off the contract.
Not because I was smarter, because they didn’t do their homework. The basics of costing overhead and making money, damn! Three months after that he was fired and that plant is closed now.
It doesn’t stop after you get the old sheepskin, u-no or elected.
I only wish both sides of our government will get on board. But the truth is the American public and the politicians do not want to discuss the truth. Major changes to the basics, no money can go out of a business or government if no money is coming in.
Like the MBA in Chicago he taught me something, he and his sales dept could not communicate. Sound familiar; it was a fustercluck u-no that left right thing up in DC!
It was fun making money; we need to bring back American manufacturing and get back to basics and make money not just print it, left or right!
Sorry I can’t name names, I don’t need to nor is that ethical. You have a good one.
Fred: I don’t really care that you post on other forums. In this case you are posting on a so called liberal mainstream media site, something that you seem to be extremely distrustful of and adamantly against. Also I never said or believed that Palin had been convicted of ethics violations. What I said was that she claims to have resigned as a result of these investigations, namely the cost and time spent on them. Furthermore, these ethics charges would never have been filed had it not been for her own legislation. That is the interesting part of this whole incident.
BW You do know that is not just liberal democrats who go to Ivy League schools? I believe President Bush, and the second President Bush both attended Yale which the last time I checked was Ivy League. In fact I would venture a guess that the elite Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale etc… care much more about family background, ie old money, and legacy then they do about political sway. You could maybe the argument that professors at these schools somehow brainwash their students, but that would in no way explain the Bushes.
Finally JB how many MBAs have you seen wreck companies?
To find the nugget of truth, one only has to look at the comments on the news stories. Here we have mind numbed robots continuing to spew hatred about Palin based on what? Nothing proven, nothing even substantiated. Only the liberal maxim of “it is not the evidence, but the seriousness of the charges”.
You never saw the scrutiny Sarah got being heaped on Obama or even the idiot Biden. But since the liberal media decided to investigate every allegation, evidence be damned, about Palin, the moon beam liberals decided that was not enough. They had to attack her personally - and when that was not enough - her children as well (how many stories do you see about Obama’s kids?).
And it continues. Really for one reason only. She is a smart intelligent woman that actually erodes their stated positions on many things - not the least of which are equality and feminism. All of which we know are mere talking points to liberals, not policy statements (anyone doubt it after the Packwood/Clinton Hypocrisy?).
The vitriol and hate - as evidenced by the Neanderthals here - will not go away until Palin is no longer a political force. And as is being demonstrated, she apparently still is.
She is right in one respect. The harassment (not investigation - harassment) of the ethics charges - all without any basis or merit - was hamstringing her in her job as Governor. I do not support or condemn her decision to step down. It is a decision she has to live with, not me.
But I can tell that the harassment is not going away as we can see from the Looney liberal ludites here and at the liberal hate sites.
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