Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the last election held in this country over on November 4, 2008? After that election the next national elections are not slated until 2010, correct? So could someone please, please tell me why there is such a furor over the losing vice presidential candidate from the last election!?! The way many on both sides of the political spectrum act, you would think that Sarah Palin was responsible for Global Warming, bitter beer face, and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

Somewhere along the campaign trail, people decided that Sarah Palin was the bane of the McCain campaign, the scourge if the Republican Party, and the least qualified vice presidential candidate ever…as if that mattered when she was on a ticket opposing the most radical, leftist, inexperienced presidential candidate EVER!!! Somehow the inexperience of Palin as veep overshadowed the inexperience of Obama, although one was running to remake the Republic in his image, while the other was trying to help a flawed warhorse ascend to the White House.

What was amazing was to hear the same attacks that the left launched, as was their place as the opposition, coming from people who ostensibly stood on the same side of the issues as Palin. The leadership of the GOP looked down on her with their studied patrician arrogance for many of the same reasons she was savaged from the left; she only went to a state school for college; she was from Alaska, for goodness sakes!; she had a veritable tribe of children; she was not polished enough for the national stage, and by God she could not best Katie Couric in an interview on CBS News! Take her to the guillotine and take off her political head, because she is finished as a political player in national politics for all time!

That was to be expected from the Republican leadership, which has always seen itself as an exclusive country club an only tolerates those not to the manor born out of the necessity of garnering their votes come election time. The country-clubbers have never had any real use for those conservatives not located along the Boston-DC-Manhattan corridor; they hated Nixon, they hated Reagan, and they only liked George Bush because he had the right bloodline to be a member in good standing. But what I never expected was to see the “rank and file” conservatives turn on Governor Palin the way she did, especially after she decided to resign as governor of Alaska.

When Palin stepped down, many in the rank and file exploded in anger. To them the move just seemed to confirm the bad things being said about the governor in the media; she was ‘erratic’, unpredictable, and just plain strange. Why, oh why, would she just quit on the people of Alaska? No reason that the governor cited was good enough to assuage their anger, even if they were not actually her constituents. Neither the frivolous ethics complaints, nor the massive FOIA requests, nor the vicious attacks on her family were reason enough for the governor to step down. No, it was somehow felt that she owed it to the state of Alaska, the people of America, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement to bear those slings and arrows, no matter how much they impeded her ability to govern, or how personally hurtful the attacks on her family were. And when Governor Palin decided that she had a responsibility to do right by her family first and foremost, and that meant stepping down as governor, she became persona non grata to many people who had supported her in the presidential campaign.

Then came the insistence that resigning as governor meant that Sarah Palin was doomed as a political entity for all time; why the anti-Palin commercials calling her a quitter were already being written. Yet for someone that is a political non-entity, there is certainly a great deal of attention paid to her. If she were so politically radioactive, why do there continue to be hit pieces written about her**cough**Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan**cough**? If she’s so over, why does anyone care what she has to say about the current healthcare debate? I mean, she is finished…right?

People constantly come back to one theme with Sarah Palin that I would like to take a little time to address. One of the things people both left and right ask about Governor Palin is, “Why do you like her?” According to many she is just…well…simple. She isn’t polished like most people in politics; she doesn’t come off like she knows everything, and she doesn’t seem like the usual professional office seeker. And those are just the qualities that draw so many people to her. She is a genuine person, not a prepackaged product that is sold to us at election time. She has faults that she doesn’t spend her whole life attempting to cover up; she makes mistakes; she gets knocked around and pulls herself together, and she stands by what she believes in no matter the political costs. People like that about her; heck, I like that about her. In a world where politicians are commodities to be sold to potential voters, Sarah Palin stands out as different type of politician; namely the kind that doesn’t need to be in the political spotlight to be happy. Nowadays that is truly a rarity, and many people appreciate that about her.

None of knows what the future holds for Sarah Palin as a political player, and I’m not going to speculate about it. But I wouldn’t write her political epitaph quite yet; you never know what Sarah from Wasilla has in store for the future!