It's Time for the GOP to Have The Talk

Here's Owen on Palinpalooza:

If she’s gearing up for a presidential run, then she abandoned the people of Alaska who elected her to serve her full term in order to peruse her personal ambitions. I would have more respect for the move if she said, “I can’t put the work into the job of Governor because I’m planning on running for POTUS.” At least she’d be being honest with them, but to say that she didn’t want to be a lame duck and wants to do bigger things? What a slap in the face.

I like Palin’s politics, her persona, and her energy. I may even end up voting for her if she gets nominated (I doubt she will). But her resignation is a very odd political move that represents a sizable red flag.

We certainly don't expect conservatives to suddenly wake up Monday morning and say to themselves, "Man, that Sarah Palin -- what the hell was I thinking!" We understand that the ties people forge to their ideological fellow travelers are pretty strong and that holding out hope for a better future is a lot easier to do than admitting that a strongly held belief in some one or some thing was mistaken, but there has to be some recognition that, at the very least, Palin's resignation opens the doors for her enemies to paint as a quitter. That's already begun to happen.

Why a person would do that to oneself is exactly what Owen calls it: odd.

The thing about odd is that it happen to attract attention, and rarely the good kind (see Jackson, Michael -- and if you don't think there are people out there who are going to think to themselves this week, "Man, you have to pretty damn weird to push Michael fricking Jackson out of the headlines!" just wait until Palin starts sharing the covers of the tabloids with the Gloved One.) If Palin thought she could put her administration to bed in such a haphazard manner, it has only begun to backfire.

There are some bloggers -- none locally that I can tell (yet) -- that have taken it upon themselves to spin this weekend's events as if they were tactical masterstrokes of a calculated strategist. They are not. Just ask the pros -- they're just as perplexed as everyone else.

What strikes us about Owen's post is that it walks a fine line between holding out hope for better circumstances and admonishing a fellow Republican for what is clearly damaging behaviour (and doing so, we might add, without breaking Reagan's 11th Commandment). Palin's behaviour in the last few days hasn't been Presidential. It's not even professional -- and though we're not experts, it doesn't appear to even be "conservative."

Spinning any of the events of this weekend as being in someway favorable to Palin seems to us to be doing the Repubican Party (which wasn't enjoying a great month to begin with) and conservatism a great intellectual disservice. Now we have feeling this will almost certainly spark an internicine spat between "elites" and "populists," but that might just have to be a discussion the Right needs to have before it can get back down to it's fighting weight. In the meantime I think we can safely say that comparing Palin to Cincinnatus will only succeed in corrupting any hope conservatism has of being taken seriously, much less return it to power.

MORE: This kind of thing -- not helpful.