When Murkowski said he was coming back to run for governor, there was practically dancing in the streets. Frank was never as popular as Ted, but he still won handily over former Juneau Mayor and Knowles’ Lt. Governor, Fran Ulmer. We did some good and needful things but we never recovered from Frank’s appointment of Lisa, the jet didn’t help, and then there was Sarah Palin. It is ironic that she complains that she was hounded from office by the ethics complaints when that is exactly what she did to the Murkowski Adminiistration, an administration that actually had preferred her for Lt. Gov and which had given her one of the State’s plum patronage jobs.

We would NEVER have countenanced Randy Ruedrich doing Republican Party and private business from his State position and we did respond to it. The only responsibility Sarah had for ethics on the AOGCC was to report/refer issues to the Department’s Ethics Supervisor, the Deputy Commissioner. Typical Sarah, she rather went to the COS and maybe the Gov as well, so her complaints about Randy had to come back down to the Department. I know they did because the DC, new to government and also a friend of Randy’s, came to me about how to handle it. He was sensitive to the issue because both the director of personnel and I had given him a stern talking to about the limits of politics on State time and equipment. We determined that he would do an investigation as if we were dealing with classified, unionized employees rather than more or less at will appointees. He goes to Sarah to document her complaints so Randy can be confronted and she blows him off and tells him that its been handled between her and Randy. No complaint, no ethics charges against Randy, case not closed but certainly not front burner and a stern talking to with Randy. Next thing we hear about it is when Sarah loudly resigns and runs to play kiss and tell with the Anchorage Daily Worker. Along the way, she teams up with the Democrats and files ethics charges against Murkowski’s AG and brings him down on a nothing charge because he owned some stock, not a lot and certainly no controlling amount, in a company the State did some business with. So, now we are battling the Lisa appointment, the jet, and Sarah has us drowning in ethics charges over stuff that nobody would have known or cared about had it been a Democrat doing it or if she hadn’t been practically sky-writing about it. So, Sarah Palin becomes the Democrats and the Anchorage Daily Workers’ favorite Republican.

Enter the FBI. GWB’s DOJ couldn’t stop treasonous leaks in DC, but they sure had a lot of time to spend in Alaska over penny ante allegations of corruption. The prosecutorial team was from Eric Holder’s alma mater, the Public Integrity Section, and was, of course, led by a holdover Democrat Hellbent to run run Ted Stevens and his son Ben to ground. They never got Ben, lost Ted, though it cost him his Senate seat, and a half-dozen or so Republican legislators were collateral damage, four or five were convicted, one awaits trial pending an appeal to the USSC. Two of those already convicted have been freed because of the same kinds of prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in Ted’s conviction being over turned. But all that was in the future, when the Democrat’s favorite Republican announced she was running for Governor against Governor Murkowski and the corrupt old boys in Juneau.

So, by the summer of ’06, we have Sarah proclaiming from the rooftops that she’s Alaska’s savior and is going to clean up the corruption. Whatever else the FBI is or isn’t good at, they are superbly able to script their actions for dramatic effect on elections and they’re crawling all over the state. Our poll numbers were in the toilet and the wheels were off the Administration. Murkowski dithered about making his announcement, so there really wasn’t a campaign. John Binkley had piled into the Primary as well since he’d never forgiven Frank for not appointing him to the Senate seat. My boss quits the Administration to go become Binckley’s campaign manager. The free for all inside the Administration both disgusted me and had me worried about becoming collateral damage myself. I had nothing to gain by sticking it out to the end and at that time, I and most others figured Knowles was going to win. He would, of course, fire me as director but I had rights to my old job in the merit system. Sarah wouldn’t have fired me, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t have worked for her long before we’d have come to some contretemps; I don’t do insecure control freaks very well. So, I retired on July 1, ’06, and watched the whole thing from the sidelines.

Anyway, by the time Sarah takes office, most Republicans are mad at her for trashing everybody in her campaign. She compounded the ill-will by firing practically every Murkowski appointee, who happened to be most of the Republicans in Alaska who knew where the light switches and rest rooms were. She rubbed salt in that by bringing back a bunch of people who’d left the Murkowski Administration in a huff.

The Legislature was in dissarray. Several had not sought office because of the cloud over them, several had been arrested, most had had their offices and files tossed by the FBI. Nobody would be seen with or talk to anybody for fear that one, the other, or both had a wire. The normally busy watering holes and restaurants in Juneau were practically empty because people were afraid to be seen together. Grip ‘n Grin receptions were sparsely attended by people who came late, left early, and said little in between.

Along the way, the Senate that had been solidly Republican since the ’70s becomes a coaltion with very liberal Democrats holding powerful positions, e.g., Elton, French, and Ellis, and the split was in large measure about who would and wouldn’t work with Gov. Palin. We still had a majority in the House, but it was shaky. Four years before, we’d had a veto-proof majority. And Sarah was Hellbent on an agenda that was anathema to most Republcans, so she teamed up with the Democrats. It was a very anti-industry agenda but the times were such that if you didn’t vote against the industry, you got tarred with the corruption charges that Sarah and the FBI had hanging in the air. So, Sarah got her way with ACES, but the industry has all but given up on Alaska as a result.

So, now that this has practically become a book itself, that’s the way I saw it from inside up until July 1, ’06, and from pretty close since then. I’d like to think that with their wings clipped, the FBI will leave us alone for awhile, but I don’t think any Red state is safe under Comrade Obama. Sarah likes to claim credit for “cleaning up,” but really all she did was take out a couple of pretty good, though not blameless, Republicans. The FBI unleashed Hell in Alaska and Sarah just glommed on to it and became first Governor, then VP, nominee, and now a celebrity writer. I and most Alaskans will be happy for her to stick to being a celebrity and leave the governing to others.

Enter Sarah Palin, the Un-Republican, and she comes back to the idea that the McGovernite Democrats got defeated on in the ’70s. This time with the help of the FBI, she gives the Democrats their wet dream, a windfall profits tax on Alaska oil producers. No, it wasn’t co-opting Democrats to accomplish conservative goals; you really can’t usually do that. It was Sarah working for the greater glory of Sarah and practically running the oil industry out of Alaska in the process.

The 2012 election will turn on experience. After electing a neophyte jackass with a five-minute career in ’08 and subsequently watching him wreck everything in sight, independents will flock to a GOP alternative who is seen to be sober and steady, with a demonstrable record of achievements. Since Sarah Palin’s half-term as governor is the centerpiece of her political career and the only concrete basis we have upon which to calculate what kind of president she might make, it is crucial to understand what kind of governor she was. From everything I’ve learned about her term in office so far, she wasn’t much to shout about. Her main political legacy in Alaska seems to have been a fracturing of the Republican Party that allowed the Democrats to wrest control of the State Senate while still in the numerical minority. The way she left office suggests anything but a capacity for sober, steady leadership.

If Palin is the GOP nominee in 2012 I’ll be with her, come hell or high water. I will not be with her if she decides to give Obama a second term by pulling some third-party stunt — which, given her history as a self-proclaimed “maverick” who stuck knives into the backs of other Republicans, I don’t see at all outside the realm of possibility. It is well worth remembering that if not for Sarah Palin, the Democrats would not now be in the current, filibuster-proof position they are vis a vis ObamaCare. (The Dems really ought to love her for using their own “culture of corruption” catchphrase from the ’06 cycle to take down a key Republican herself.)

As aesthete pointed out above, we abhorred this behavior coming from McCain — why should we put up with it from Palin?

LOL

I enjoy her poking Comrade Obama and the National Democrats. See, e.g., fmr. Speaker Chennault’s remarks about her finally figuring out which party to attack in the article and book I cited. That said, when the Bots come around with their canonization ritual, well somebody has to speak or we might have to forever hold our peace.

http://ehvogel.blogspot.com/2009/10/sarah-palins-accomplishments.html

I’ll just sit back now and read.
Again, I am NOT taking sides.

I was thinking of not posting because of the wrath I might incur.
But what the hay.

So keep up the silly attacks, because they aren’t fooling anyone.

We’re still waiting for you to tell us all about those legislative accomplishments of Governor Palin during her long three years in office. No leftest smears, no personal attacks, just talking about real records of real accomplishment which will appeal to I’s a D’s needed to win elections.

You can do it! Show that mean old Art that you know what you are talking about.

Frankly, the only Democrat in the Alaska Legislature I would associate with beyond the grip and grin level was Richard Foster, who caucused with the Rs, and he died this fall.

As to the Rs, you just can’t run on a message that you’re better than everybody else and expect that everybody else to like you much. In “Going Rogue” she talks about how former Sen. Rick Halford was a key mentor and inspiration to her. It is significant that Halford’s behind his back nickname in the Legislature was “Captain Chaos.” It was all about Rick; you couldn’t rely on him, his name on a chit sheet didn’t mean much ’cause he’d just change his mind right before the vote. But he was in many ways the archtypal Mat Valley Aginner. They all know they’re against most everything but they don’t know what they’re for and they don’t know what to do if they have to do something because just being agin it ain’t working. They’re sorta a Republican equivalent of the Democrat CAVE people – Citizens Against Virtually Everything.

We’ll make it easy, just one piece, how it effected the lives of ordinary Alaskans like Art. But it has to be a piece of legislation which was the Governor’s signature issue.

Show us how much you know hbg Gary.

Even in “Going Rogue,” the “young” ethics supervisor and leg liason who became Exxon’s lobbyist used to be nominally my boss; he was above me on the org chart and had the good sense to not try to be my boss, we remain friends as that word has meaning in the political world anyway. I know exactly what happened when he went to see her about the issues with Randy Ruedrich and it is very different from her version and I have a very different view of his involvement with gas line negotiations in the Murkowski Administrattion. I thought Going Rogue was worth the $9 I paid for it at Amazon but I don’t think I’d have paid almost $30.

On the other one, for $17, it is about an accurate look at her as I’ve seen; go read the Amazon reviews and judge by that.

Probably Gary or Josh Painter or one of the other hard core PalinBots long gone, not much to say in the way of substance. Even some of the regular PalinBots at least try to make coherent arguments about actual accomplishments of SWMNBN, this one not so much.