GOP Tried Intervention To Get Palin Back On Track

Monday’s New York Times puts together the pieces that led to the resignation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. It got to the point where an official from the Republican Governor’s Association went to Alaska to help organize and focus the governor, who was having problems dealing with all that had happened since she was selected to be John McCain’s running mate.

The official, the association’s executive director, Nick Ayers (right), arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election.

Like so much of the advice sent Ms. Palin’s way by influential supporters, it appeared to be happily received and then largely discarded, barely slowing what was, in retrospect, an inexorable march toward the resignation she announced 10 days ago.

Disorganized, canceling important events like CPAC after being offered a keynote speaker position, and not being aware of other events where organizers were led to believe she’d attend, Ayers was charged with helping to get her organization in order.

Hope for the intervention’s success soon faded. Despite advice to stick close to home and focus on an Alaska agenda, the governor accepted an invitation to attend an anti-abortion dinner in Indiana in April, even though the state budget was hanging in the balance in the Legislature.

When Tom Wright, chief of staff for the speaker of the Alaska House, suggested that the governor would catch heat for leaving, Ms. Palin stormed into his office and, according to a person familiar with the conversation, “proceeded to ream him out.”

But Governor Palin has youth, ambition and time.  And a political party in search of a voice.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.