I’m a Sarah Palin fan. Let me just go ahead and state that from the outset of this post. I knew about Sarah Palin before McCain tapped her as his running mate and I was impressed. I thought “a female Republican with the right stance on all (or most) of the issues who has fought corruption even among Republicans in her own state? That’s incredible!”
When McCain became the nominee and began his VP selection process, I was definitely pulling for Mitt Romney, as he had been my favorite candidate during the primaries. However, when he selected Sarah Palin, I was not upset in the least. In fact, I was glad. I felt like she lent some much-needed conservative credibility to an otherwise moderate McCain campaign.
Having said all of that, I believe that Palin’s decision to resign was a poor political move. Many conservative pundits are praising it as a smart and calculated decision that is true to her style, claiming that she is setting herself up for a presidential run in 2012. Certainly, it would give her the freedom to move about the country and build up a nationwide organization like Romney and other candidates are able to do. Sean Hannity is defending her by comparing her to people like Kathleen Sebelius, Rahm Emmanuel and even Barack Obama, all of whom left their jobs to pursue more prominent ones. The only problem is Palin doesn’t have another job secured for her on the horizon…at least not that we know of. Those 3 Democrats did.
Maybe a 2012 presidential run is in the works. But if such is the case, let me go ahead and tell you what the press and her opponents will say: “if she quit when the pressure got to be too much as governor of Alaska, how can she handle the pressure of the Oval Office?” No matter what the reason for her resignation, that’s a question she will have to answer.
I’d love to believe that this is all part of her grand scheme to be one of the greatest women in American politics and that perhaps when her history is written, this event will be thought of as a wise strategic move on her part. I just don’t see it. At first glance, a large chunk of Republicans already think that it was a bad idea. A new Rasmussen poll shows that 40% of Republicans believe that her resignation has hurt her chances for 2012, compared to 24% who believe that it helped.
My message to the GOP concerning Palin is: don’t give up on her but at the same time, don’t hang your hopes on her alone. Remember when Romney made that comment about how there were more influential Republicans besides Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin (see post Romney vs. Palin)? I think he’s definitely right. There are more influential Republicans out there. There’s Michele Bachmann, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, Eric Cantor, Tim Pawlenty, and I would even say Ron Paul. We can’t afford to put all our stock in one person.
I truly hope that Sarah Palin is able to spin this whole situation in her favor. Maybe she will. But until she does, I suggest we look elsewhere. We don’t have to abandon her, but we do have other options we need to consider.
Posted by Braden 
