Live from Fairfaxbanks

Aside from undoubtedly causing Rene Descartes to roll over in his grave, Sarah Palin's resignation speech accomplished little, if anything that will help her in the long run.

She had three weeks to write the damn thing and it sounded no better than what was obviously a hastily arranged resignation announcement speech earlier this month. It rambled and was frequently incoherent. No major, lingering questions (like "What's next?") were resolved while trivial grievances were granted more attention than they warranted. Logic was eschewed in favor of emotionally charged buzz words. And so forth...

It was clearly her own and it wasn't good. If this is her stump speech for the next few years then she would do best to book as many engagements as possible and get the money upfront because this act will get old very quickly. Sooner rather than later her influence will begin to wane and shortly after that she'll be reduced to playing smaller venues with Joe the Plumber on Reunion tours.

Palin doesn't need to worry about being attacked from Democrats or Hollywood or "the Media" -- they will take their shots only in so far as it helps them raise money or earn ratings. There's nothing that any of these folks can say that should throw her off her game. What Palin really needs to worry about is the opposition to her within the GOP. Yesterday Sen. Jim Bunning threw in the towel after Republicans blackballed him with his donors. Plain should worry about suffering from that same fate after the party squeezes every last fund-raising dollar out of her.

On the other hand, and to her infinite credit, many of the cable outlets covering the speech did subtly seem to lend credence to her claim that they were out of touch by refering to Fairbanks, Alaska as Fairfax -- the tony northern Virgina county across the Patomoc from DC -- over and over again. But in the grand scheme of thing those are pretty small beans.