What The Washington Times calls an “exclusive,” I call a blinding flash of the obvious: “EXCLUSIVE: Palin plans to stay in politics.”

Brushing aside the criticisms of pundits and politicos, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she plans to jump immediately back into the national political fray — stumping for conservative issues and even Democrats — after she prematurely vacates her elected post at month’s end.

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP’s base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and “energy independence.”

“I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation,” she said over lunch in her downtown office, 40 miles from her now-famous hometown of Wasilla — population 7,000 — where she began her political career.

“People are so tired of the partisan stuff — even my own son is not a Republican,” said Mrs. Palin, who stunned the political world earlier this month with her decision to step down as governor July 26 with 18 months left in her term. Both her son, Track, 20, an enlisted soldier serving in Iraq, and her husband, Todd, are registered as “nonpartisan” in Alaska.

I, for one, am getting mighty tired of people constantly dragging Sarah Palin’s children into the political arena.  They’re not politicians and their privacy should be respected.  It’s especially unseemly when we’re talking about a young soldier in harm’s way.

Otherwise, I wish Sarah Palin good luck in finding conservative Democrats who support limited government, strong defense, and energy independence.

Sarah Palin has announced that, not only will she not seek re-election as governor of Alaska in 2010 but that she is resigning her office later this month.   Andrew Hinkelman and Lori Tipton for KTUU:

Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor’s Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said.

There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

I’m not sure who her political brain trust is but the idea that resigning as governor — the only significant political office she’s had — after only two years will improve her chances of getting elected president is, to say the least, unconventional.

WaPo’s Paul Volpe reports, “Palin’s decision comes amid polling that showed her losing altitude from the stratospheric heights to which she ascended following her election in 2006 but remained a strong favorite to win reelection.”

He points to a Chris Cillizza piece from a month back arguing Palin would be wise not to seek reelection because Alaska is a long way from the key primary states and it’s not a great time to be governor right now, anyway, because of the economic climate. Fair enough.  For most serious presidential contenders, it may well be better to spend more time raising money, building an organization, and eating pancakes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But Palin’s not an ordinary presidential aspirant in that she’s got essentially no experience.  True, that didn’t seem to stop Barack Obama.  But he’s sui generis and came out of the gates giving the impression he had at least thought deeply about the major national and international issues presidents would deal with.  Fairly or not, Palin lost that presumption almost immediately upon her debut on the national stage.  Without a governorship as a platform for demonstrating competence, I’m not sure how she rebrands herself.

UPDATE: Well, the combination of breaking news, Palin’s pop culture icon status, and a slow news day have made this one of the biggest political stories in some time.  As of 6 am, this post already has 50 comments and Memeorandum is going nuts.  See a screencap here; it’s too big to embed in a post.

Nor, half a day later, are we any closer to unraveling this mystery.

The near-universal consensus is that her resignation speech was simply godawful. Watch it if you haven’t already:

Ed Morrissey believes, as do I, that “it simply can’t be rationalized on the basis of what Palin said today.  It’s easily the most bizarre resignation I’ve seen, and just about senseless.”

A few lefty blogs are peddling thinly sourced rumors of an “iceberg scandal” involving pending federal indictment over alleged embezzlement involving a  sports complex in Wasilla.

Mark Halperin offers “10 Possible reasons for Palin’s decision,” all of which are necessarily speculative.

1. Her political standing has slipped enough that she could have lost a re-election bid if she tried to retain her current office.

2. Her political standing has slipped enough that even if she had run and won, she would have likely been bloodied in the race, maybe even in a primary.

Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 after having lost a bid as California governor in 1962 and for president in 1960.  Mitt Romney was a serious contender for the 2008 GOP nomination despite deciding not to run for re-election because he would have lost.  Neither, however, resigned after only two years in their only significant office.

3. Even more ethics complaints (many frivolous) would have been filed against her.

So?

4. She’s got a book to write.

And, I guess, having people think you’re weird sells books.

5. She’s got a special needs baby to raise.

But she had a special needs baby to raise when she was seeking the vice presidency. And, for that matter, if that’s her rationale, why not say so?  People would be sympathetic.

6. It is logistically impossible to run for president as the sitting governor of Alaska — because of flight times. (Not hard: *impossible*)

Already noted by Cillizza and reasonable enough.  But Alaska hasn’t moved all that much in the last two years.

7. She couldn’t truly explore her money-making potential as an incumbent governor.

8. She couldn’t truly explore her media potential as an incumbent governor.

Both true.  Maybe she’s realized she’s a pretty good pop culture celebrity and she should just be the best pop culture celebrity she can be?  Sort of a middle-aged Britney Spears.

9. The legislature has turned so much against her that the job wasn’t much fun any more.

Wah.

10. If she wants to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, she needs to spend more time raising money, establishing her international and national expertise, and traveling the Lower 48. And she needs to start now.

I’d say she needed to start about twenty years ago.  But sure.

In fairness, though, Bill Kristol thinks it’s a good idea.  And he’s seldom wrong.  Oh, wait.

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It’s an enormous gamble – but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she’s freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues – and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she’ll take a hit for leaving the governorship early – but how much of one? She’s probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven’t conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she’ll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She’ll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she’ll have to perform well.

That’s essentially a long form version of Halperin’s 10th reason.

A new report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology finds scientifical proof that Sarah Palin’s hotness was a drag on the Republican ticket.  The study by University of South Florida researchers Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg, cleverly titled, “Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that Objectification Causes Women to be Perceived as Less Competent and Less Fully Human ,” found:

Although a great deal of research has examined the effects of objectification on women’s self-perceptions and behavior, empirical research has yet to address how objectifying a woman affects the way she is perceived by others. We hypothesize that focusing on a woman’s appearance will promote reduced perceptions of competence, and also, by virtue of construing the women as an “object,” perceptions of the woman as less human. We found initial experimental evidence for these hypotheses as a function of objectifying two targets – Sarah Palin and Angelina Jolie. In addition, focusing on Palin’s appearance reduced intentions to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket (prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election). We discuss these findings in the context of the election and the objectification of women.

Tom Jacobs dutifully digested the report and describes the research methodology:

They took a group of 133 undergraduates and assigned them to write a few lines about one of two celebrities: Palin or actress Angelina Jolie. Half of the participants in each category were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person,” while the other half were asked to write “your thoughts and feelings about this person’s appearance.”

The participants were then asked to rate their subject (Palin or Jolie) in terms of various attributes, including competence. Finally, they were asked who they intended to vote for in the upcoming election.

Those who wrote about Palin’s appearance were more positive in their assessments than those who assessed her qualities as a person. But they rated her far lower in terms of competence, intelligence and capability, and were far less likely to indicate they planned to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket.

“It wasn’t her appearance per se” that soured people on Palin, Heflick said in an interview. “It was the effect her appearance had on their perception of her competence and humanity. Those variables made people less likely to vote for her.” (Not surprisingly, the participants’ feelings about Jolie did not influence their political opinions, whether they focused on her looks or personality.)

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t want Angelina Jolie to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, either.

Jacobs reminds us that Will Wilkinson raised this point very early in the campaign:

I think she is a tremendously sexy woman. How this will effect the race, I have no idea, but it’s just got to. It’s not an issue of glamour so much as a kind of Paglian chthonic sexual power. Set in that context, her unabashed embrace of her fecundity and motherhood as a kind of qualification makes a lot of sense.

LAT’s Andrew Malcolm quips, “would seem to suggest that, for any hope of success in 2012 or beyond, the 45-year-old governor needs to whack off that hair, pork up a bit and get some cheap, baggy pantsuits over at the Wasilla Wal-Mart. And instead of that come-on wink that many thought they liked, she’d do well to develop an uncontrollable facial twitch.”

The passage of four years will likely take some of the edge off Palin’s sexiness.  Why, she might even get a fleck or two of gray hair by then.   But she may find some other obstacles to the White House other than being too darn hot.

via Taegan Goddard

Newsweek shares several tidbits from their “special election project,” which gave them inside information that they couldn’t publish until after the fact.

Palin’s Spending Spree

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Palin’s sensibilities as to where the lines of propriety are don’t match mine.  As with Troopergate, I find all this rather unseemly and simply not in accordance with how people in positions of public trust should behave.  That said, going from the relative minor leagues of Alaska to suddenly co-starring in the Show is a tremendous jump and one suspects neither she nor her family had the appropriate wardrobe at the outset.

McCain and Palin Estranged?

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

[...]

Palin launched her attack on Obama’s association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain’s advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

McCain spent thirty years in the military. He ought to have understood Unity of Command better than this. And who the hell ever heard of a losing VP nominee getting stump time at the concession speech?

Obama Threatened As Victory Loomed

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

I’m uncomfortable with the insinuation that Palin’s calling him a socialist, even one who “pals around with terrorists,” put the Obamas into harm’s way.  It was, however, a shameful approach to campaigning.

Tell McCain He’s Losing?

On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain’s core group of advisers—Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons—met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had “a pulse.”

I’m guessing McCain knew damned well what his chances were. This was not, after all, his first rodeo.   He’s been in Washington longer than Sarah Simmons has been alive.

McCain Too Nice?

McCain also was reluctant to use Obama’s incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a “celebrity” ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).

McCain’s instincts were right here for two reasons. First, doing these things wouldn’t have done any good. Optimism wins elections, not dourness. Second, he’s absolutely horrible at delivering attack lines that he knows are nonsense. He’s too honorable to not feel sheepish doing it but, alas, not quite honorable enough to resist it.

Obama Thought Debate Questions Stupid, Too

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

We disagree on the scale of government action required but I’m with him on that.  Regardless, whether because he vented during prep or just because of his uncanny self-discipline, he managed much better than McCain to pretend the process wasn’t stupid and annoying.

Floating all around the blogosphere right now is the charge that, while Mayor of Wasilla, the town’s police department charged rape victims for the cost of the rape kits used in the forensic investigation of the crime. This claim is based on an article from Wasilla’s hometown paper the Frontiersman, which regards then-Governor Mike Knowles signing into law a bill outlawing the practice in 2000, when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla. Here’s the passage being focused on:

Gov. Tony Knowles recently signed legislation protecting victims of sexual assault from being billed for tests to collect evidence of the crime, but one local police chief said the new law will further burden taxpayers.

[...]

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.

“In the past we’ve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer,” Fannon said.

According to Fannon, the new law will cost the Wasilla Police Department approximately $5,000 to $14,000 a year to collect evidence for sexual assault cases.

[Quotations marks and apostrophe in fourth paragraph added for clarity--the link is a plain text file and the quotation marks and apostrophes may have been lost.]

This was a pretty appalling policy. As the article notes, this was not the practice in the town of Palmer, a neighbor to Wasilla, so it’s not as though this was merely a “business as usual” deal. Personally, I scoffed a little bit when Chief Fannon noted that they charge the victim’s insurance company, as though that makes it okay. Last time I checked, the police don’t charge your homeowner’s insurance when they lift fingerprints after a burglary. And what if the insurance company denied the claim? Or applied a deductible? In those cases, the victim would still be left bearing the cost of the forensic investigation of crime committed against her.

Most of the sites who are blogging this story are, of course, stating that Palin absolutely supported this policy, which I don’t think is warranted by the evidence at hand. That said, there’s a good case to be made that Palin was aware of this policy. For one, as Mayor, Palin forbade city officials from talking to the press unless it was cleared by her first. Given that the article directly quotes Chief Fallon (a Palin appointee and political ally), the prima facie evidence would lead one to believe she was aware of what Fallon was going to say about the policy.

Second, I don’t think that Palin could brush this off as saying that she wasn’t involved in police policy because she was, as mayor, intimately involved with the Police Department. For one thing, she was one of the group of Wasilla citizens who fought to install a Police Department in the first place (to her credit, I might add.) Also, as Mayor, she made several policy directives towards the department, including (again to her credit) encouraging police officers to stop patrolling in cars and start getting to know the neighborhood.

Given the above, I don’t think it’s fair to say necessarily that Palin explicitly supported this practice. However, as Mayor, the buck stops with her. She probably knew that the policy existed, and if she didn’t she sure as hell should have–Alaska is notorious for its high rates of rape (2.4 times the national average), so it’s not as though this is something that wasn’t going to affect her citizens.

If nothing else, I’d say that this is fair game to ask more questions and gather information about. If it turns out to be true that Palin allowed this policy under her Mayoral Administration, I would say that that calls into question her judgment and decency.