Quitters Never Win

Sarah Palin is shrewd. I was going to say shrew, and, while that's true, too, and a bit too easy, she is actually shrewd.

In the Vanity Fair piece, Todd Purdum talks about her as McCain portrayed her: the "fresh-faced reformer who had taken on Alaska's big oil companies and the corrupt Republican Establishment, governing with bipartisan support."

This unfortunately, is only part Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin is very cool, very determined, with a strict mindset of attaining a goal at all costs--though, surely, with no costs to herself. Purdum describes her as "intuitive," but also says she surrounds herself with a small group of people that she trusts, but has no qualms about disregarding and discarding those people who question her or have outlived their usefulness toward attaining Sarah Palin's goals. She is also seen as being quite vengeful to those who cross her. There is the truth, and then the truth as she sees it.

In high school, says Lyda Green, a former Republican senator and former supporter of Palin, "her nickname...was 'Barracuda.' I was never called Barracuda....There's a certain instinct there that you go for the jugular."

Green is no longer a Palin supporter, obviously. She has seen the light.

Purdum lists several things that McCain could have, should have, learned about Palin had the vetting process been more than a quick lunch and a walk around Wasilla. For Palin "no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition."

• Sarah Palin will use you to get what she wants, and then forget she ever knew you. One of her chief supporters was former Wasilla Mayor John Stein, who mentored her while she was on the city council. Palin turned against him in her bid to become mayor. And as mayor, she "fired the police chief, eased out the museum director and the city planner, and fired and then rehired the librarian..." Now, as mayor she was allowed to hire and fire whomever she chose, but she blamed the firings on budget concerns not a personal, conservative agenda.
• Another example of Palin's do anything, use anybody approach to her career, was that, while on the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she charged that a "fellow commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, the chair of the Alaska Republican Party, was conducting political business on state time." Ruedrich resigned. But when Palin was running for governor in 2006, it was discovered that she was guilty of exactly the same thing. Do as I say, but don't get caught if you don't. Eh, Sarah?
• During her run for governor, Palin formed a team to support her made up almost entirely of friends from Wasilla. These friends now suggest that her debate prep even back then left a lot to be desired. She apparently seemed uninterested in prepping for the debate would get mad if anyone suggested what she was doing was wrong. Palin, herself, remarked to Andrew Halcro, who was running against her for governor, "Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and i ask myself, Does any of this really matter?"

It does, Sarah. It does. Which is why you're a quitter.

More to come.

The Vanity Fair piece is HERE.