Sarah Palin explains how she was driven out of office by her critics:
It’s that our administration is so stymied and paralyzed because of a political game that has been chosen to be played by critics who have discovered loopholes in the ethics reform that I championed that allows them to continually, continually bombard the state with frivolous ethics-violation charges, with lawsuits, with these fishing expeditions. We win the lawsuits, we win the ethics charges, we win all that — but it comes at such great cost. The distraction, the waste of time and money, the public’s time and money — it’s insane to continue down this road. And Alaskans who have paid attention to what’s going on, they understand that.Now, there’s been some frustration with some in the media not fully reporting what’s been going on, so this may come as a shock to some Alaskans. We have sat down with reporters, showed them proof of the frivolity, the wastefulness — you know, millions of dollars this is costing our state to fight frivolous charges. And countless, countless hours from my staff, our department of law, from me every single day just trying to set the record straight. And it doesn’t cost the adversaries a dime in this game.
Note that Palin has so far won 14 of the lawsuits, yet been left with a personal legal bill of more than US$600,000, while her pursuers pay nothing. Her salary as governor is just $125,000, after she knocked back a $25,000 pay rise last December.
Resigning as governor gives her the chance of earning big money to pay back the bills she incurred in proving herself innocent of corruption. In this way her critics have forced out of office a popularly elected governor by using nothing more than false accusations, smears and legal tricks. How profoundly undemocratic this is. How foul.
This in some senses mirrors the completely dishonest and unethical campaign that was waged against Paul Wolfowitz, and sadly shows that lies and misrepresentations can be successful.
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