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Story Archives: Palin paves way for Jindal


Palin paves way for Jindal
by Sam Hanna, Jr. - posted Thursday, August 12th, 2010 @ 8:24 amE-mail Story E-mail Story | Print Story Print Story 
Editor's Note: This column for first published the week of July 6, 2009. It is timely in light of the speculation that Gov. Bobby Jindal may not complete his term to pursue other interests.

Sarah Palin's decision to resign as governor in Alaska could have implications down on the bayou.

At the very least, Palin's plans to vacate her post later this month with some 18 months left in her term could prompt Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to rethink his views on running for president in 2012. That's assuming Jindal's chief of staff Timmy Teepell was forthcoming when he said not long ago that Jindal was content to serve as governor and had no intentions of seeking the Republican nomination for president in three years.

Since Teepell is a friend, let's hope he doesn't mind a friend telling him that he would make a terrible poker player.

While speculation ran rampant earlier this year that the power brokers in national Republican Party circles had their eyes set on Jindal as an option to oppose Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race, the excitement surrounding a Jindal candidacy has subsided a bit. It did so in light of Jindal's performance in delivering a response to Obama's so-called State of the Union speech, or his call to arms to grow the size of government at the expense of the taxpayers for generations to come. Needless to say, Jindal's retort was not one of his finer moments.

In the meantime, let us recall that last year very few people outside of Alaska knew who Palin was. That changed, of course, when Sen. John McCain selected her as his running mate for the Republican ticket in the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin, it turns out, was quite popular on the campaign trail among hard-core Republicans, who obviously were motivated by her pointed remarks about Obama, then-vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and just about anything and everything associated with the Democratic Party.

Though she's short on knowledge, Palin is a decent stump speaker. Or a smart alec. Take your pick.

Palin's luster, though, took a turn for the worst thanks to the national media, which crawled into bed with Obama and all of that hoopla about change as soon as he delivered the first blow to Hillary Clinton's candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination back in the winter of 2008. The media obviously detested Palin, and it showed day in and day out if one took the time to read The New York Times or The Washington Post or bothered to watch the news coverage of the presidential race on the major television networks including MSNBC.

Though the 2008 presidential campaign ended months ago, Palin has remained under fire. Dogged by a host of investigations over charges that she's not as ethical as she would have us believe, Palin, according to news reports, owes about $500,000 in legal fees she accrued in defending herself. Also, her family has been subjected to some pretty intense scrutiny, which can be expected when your child has a child out of wedlock. Parading your child and your child's child around as if they are to be placed on a pedestal didn't help matters, especially if your political party attempts to pass itself off as the party of family values.

In time, Palin buckled and announced her intentions to resign.

While her explanation that she's accomplished all that she cares to accomplish as governor in Alaska would be plausible under normal circumstances, it doesn't pass the smell the test in this case.

Instead, Palin probably quit -- yes, she quit -- to make money to pay off the legal fees she owes in defending herself against ethics charges. She most likely quit, too, because it is quite possible someone or some organization discovered something in Palin's past that would end her political career, though the fact that she quit her job as governor ended her political career whether she realizes it or not.

That brings us back to Jindal.

Fresh off a successful legislative session in which he refused to embrace a tax increase in lieu of cutting spending, Jindal stands alone as the only Republican governor in America who is actually governing like a conservative.

Isn't that what the national Republican Party needs?
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