So let me get this straight.

We have an Alaska governor named Sarah Palin who isn’t yet running for president, but likes to make it exceedingly obvious that she will be running soon.

So campaigning in Iowa, and New Hampshire, and the other important caucus states is pretty hard from Alaska. So what does she do to fix that? She resigns from being Governor of Alaska before even completing her first term of any office above being mayor of a town called Wasilla, a town with a population of about 5500 and more moose than they have people.

Charlie Cook, a respected political analyst of The Cook Political Report, has this to say:

I wonder whether it will be possible to be a sitting governor in 2011 and 2012 while running for the Republican nomination, but particularly from a state as far away from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and the key money states as Alaska.

Running for President from Little Rock as Gov. Bill Clinton did, or running from Austin as Gov. George W. Bush did, was hard in 1992 and 2000, and harder now with the campaigns longer, more expensive and more intense. But being CEO of a state next door to Alaska from Juneau while seriously running for the nomination would be incredibly hard. Someone might be an effective governor or a serious candidate but not both. [...]

There is currently a vacuum in the 2012 GOP presidential race — no Ensign or Sanford, probably not Jindal, Romney is not fresh or new, and Pawlenty isn’t exciting either. She may feel like she can have an open field.
– Via the Political Wire

However, that’s not the end of the story.

An alternate opinion came up on why Palin might of resigned:

Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home.
– Via Think Progress

But that’s not all… in response, Sarah Palin declared the accusations “unfounded” and “baseless”, and threatened to sue the entire media.

The action is revealed on her twitter page:

12:03 AM Jul 5th
See letter from my attorney on baseless allegations of past 24hrs @ http://tinyurl.com/l4ct5n

about 24 hours ago
To see full text of the letter from my attorney on baseless allegations of past 24hrs check http://tinyurl.com/mmhv4uabout

about 14 hours ago
Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again….

about 14 hours ago
so I’ll make attempt to keep up w/attaching corrected info. I head 2 West AK villages today, look forward to their busy comm fish activity!

about 11 hours ago
Trying to keep up w/getting truth to u, like proof there’s no “FBI scandal”, here’s link http://tinyurl.com/nzlae8 Thanks, AK!

about 11 hours ago
Attached is my “thank you” sent yesterday to express gratitude, & smack down lies at same time http://tinyurl.com/q28wl5

Anyways… So what’s on all these links that Palin is desperately sending around?

Four press conferences, and plenty of interesting quotes blasting the news media for hurting her apparently just for the fun of it.

On July 3rd, 2009, Governor Sarah Palin announced her intent to resign her gubernatorial duties and transfer the powers of Governor to Lt. Governor Sean Parnell.

Almost immediately afterwards, several unscrupulous people have asserted false and defamatory allegations that the ‘real’ reasons for Governor Palin’s resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex. This canard was first floated by Democrat operatives in September 2008 during the national campaign and followed up by sympathetic Democratic writers. It was easily rebutted then as one of many fabrications about Sarah Palin. Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact.

…and leaving us only to wonder what office she might be gearing up to battle for.

I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I’ve never thought I needed a title before one’s name to forge progress in America. I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!

God bless you! And I look forward to making a difference – with you!

Sarah

CBS gets the scoop where Palin goes as far as even threatening that “legal action may be taken against bloggers and publications that reprint what he calls fraudulent claims.”

Palin has kept a low profile since her abrupt announcement Friday at a hastily called news conference at her home in suburban Wasilla, outside Anchorage. All of her public communication since then has been on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, or through statements released by her office. [...]

On Saturday, Palin laid the groundwork to take on a larger, national role after leaving state government, citing a “higher calling” with the aim of uniting the country along conservative lines. [...] Palin also cast herself as a victim and blasted the media, calling the response to her announcement “predictable” and out of touch.

It appears that everyone knows where Palin is aimed now, but no one knows where she will end up. At least we know that she’s determined not to make the media her friend.

CQ Politics probably has the real reason on why Palin is leaving office, and it’s not because of corruption, but rather that:

[s]he was facing a rocky road to the end of her term with falling approval numbers, criticism that she was paying too much attention to national matters and not the state, continuing ethics inquiries, efforts by news organizations to obtain emails written during the 2008 campaign and stories about her family that were grist for tabloids and even late-night comedian David Letterman.

-

And lastly, something unrelated but hilarious from the same CBS article:

At the same time, Palin informed her spokesman David Murrow early Saturday that someone using the name ‘exgovsarahpalin’ on Twitter was spreading a false rumor that there was to be a party at her suburban home in Wasilla, outside Anchorage. Palin was afraid her home would be mobbed, and security was dispatched, Murrow said.

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