Sarah Palin's Independence Day

It's no big secret now that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has resigned from office and will leave her position as of the end of this month rather than gear up for a re-election campaign.

This isn't a surprise in a way, even though the media portrays it that way. They've been trashing her nonstop since the day McCain selected her as his running mate in 2008. Her political enemies both within Alaska and within the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) precincts have been jumping on the jampile with disgusting--and completely untrue--allegations about her family. And 15 (yes 15) "investigations" for impropriety have been mounted against her in her own state, with 13 of them by now adjudged unfounded but with two more to go. Never wealthy, her family has by now incurred an estimated $500,000 in legal bills and there's only so much of this crap that a normal human being can take. Which her well-funded opponents are well aware of.

What we've been seeing here, for those who have been watching as opposed to indulging in it, is a 24/7 vilification campaign that makes even the left's trashing of Dick Nixon look like amateur hour. Palin is a fresh political voice who genuinely represents a major political point-of-view in flyover country (read 75% of the America you never see in the media). Dangerous stuff for the tax-and-spend left currently in power. The East and Left Coasties in the media and entertainment business as well as the permanent political classes in New York and DC needed to get rid of her quick before, like Andrew Jackson, she wins the White House and has a bunch of uncouth supporters invading the White House and putting their muddy boots on the expensive chairs. And they've done so. For now.

If you wonder today why good, honest people won't run for office, you have no further to look than to this disgusting treatment. Hugh Hewitt, cited by a guest columnist in his own Townhall blog, sums the whole spectacle up pretty well:

As Hugh said on the air the other day while talking to Jim Geraghty, “everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it's not just enough to say, 'I disagree with you,'; she has to be repudiated and crushed."

You had a taste of this during the second term of Dick Nixon. The blows rarely landed on Ronald Reagan. (But they landed tellingly on the heads of Judges Bork and Thomas during their hearings.)

The technique Hugh cites was perfected during the Clinton Administration which honed it to a fine art--you didn't merely refute your opponents. You beat them into the gutter and then stomped on them so they could never get up again.

Who knows why Governor Palin is really quitting? Is there a REAL scandal ready to come out of the closet. Some like to think so. But only time will tell. I personally think she's looking for a way to change the rules of the ball game and turn the tables on her critics. At some point. Maybe not now.

They don't call her Sarah Barracuda for nothing.

We wish her the best of luck.