Sarah Palin

[Minor Axis]

If anyone wants to read an amazing Sarah Palin story check out The Tragedy of Sarah Palin at Atlantic Magazine.

I admit that I don't know anything about Sarah Palin other than when I met her at the Republican Convention with a slash and burn speech handed to her by her handlers. In Alaska she stood up against corrupt Republican leadership banding with temporary allies, state Democrats, to insist on a program that rewarded the State of Alaska with higher taxes from big oil. Higher taxes from big oil? Holy shit!!

The article describes the perfect opportunity at the Republican convention to say look what I did in Alaska, I worked with both sides for the betterment of the state instead, we got what we got and she's been selling herself on those terms ever since.

At first, her team tried to win the Republicans over. But it became clear this wasn’t going to happen. So Palin did something that would be hard to imagine from her today: she pivoted to the Democrats. “We sat down with her and said, ‘If you want to get something passed, it’ll have to be much stronger,’” Les Gara, a liberal House member, told me. “And to give her credit, she did what she needed to get a bill passed.”

But McCain and Palin didn’t run as mavericks. Instead, they turned hard right. Palin’s old colleagues were stunned. “The speech at the Republican convention that made her a star, that was just shocking,” French told me. “She could have said, ‘I’ll do for the nation what I did for Alaska: I’ll work with both sides and won’t care where the ideas come from.’ Her background supported that. Instead, they handed her a red-meat script she’s been reading from ever since.”