Alaska to Palin: Drop Dead

[Blue_In_AK]

From Dave Weigel at Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/12/28/alaska-to-palin-drop-dead.aspx

Public Policy Polling confirms what had become pretty obvious in the defeat of Joe Miller: Alaskans don't like Sarah Palin anymore.

In Alaska just 33% of voters have a favorable opinion of her to 58% with a negative one. The only place where fewer voters see her positively than her own home state is dark blue Massachusetts.

Democrats hate Palin in Alaska but they hate her everywhere so there's nothing newsworthy about that. What makes her home state numbers unusually bad is that Republicans see her favorably by only a 60/30 margin. In most places she's closer to 80% favorability within her own party. Also while independents don't like her anywhere their level of animosity in Alaska is unusually large- 65% unfavorable to only 25% with a favorable opinion.

One reason some people expected Joe Miller to lose the GOP primary this summer was that Palin's unpopularity in the state was an open secret. I visited Alaska in July, and spent half a day in Wasilla, where one used book store put Going Rogue in the Alaska Fiction section. There are simple psychological reasons for all of this. People come to Alaska to strike out and get rich -- in gold, on the oil pipeline, on fishing boats. But Alaskans don't bail on the state to get rich elsewhere, and that's obviously what Palin did in July 2009. She kept her home base in the state while making money as a political pundit Outside. As she did this, Alaskans visiting other states, who were once asked about bears or Deadliest Catch, were asked some variation of the question "ooh, ooh, can you see Russia from your house?" So this is a very specific, provincial kind of popularity plunge.

Told ya so. :P

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Did the majority of Alaskans EVER like the barracuda???

[Cleita]

2. They must have. They elected her Governor.

We Californians can't talk though. Our morons voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[Ken Burch]

9. Not the majority, though

She only got 48% in the 2006 election here.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

15. Sarah Palin owes her ascent to the simple fact she was pretty much the only...

Republican in the state who wasn't at that time under criminal investigation, nothing more to it than that.

[Blue_In_AK]

16. Yes, you're exactly right.

Coming off of Frank Murkowski, who was by the end of his term the most unpopular governor in the country, anybody would have looked good. Sarah was spunky, she talked a good game and she had established a reputation as a corruption buster. We were duped, plain and simple.

[Bandit]

22. When McCain chose Palin she was considered the most popular Governor in America

She had an approval rating of over 80%. She blew that one all to Hell though..

[Historic NY]

3. Tired of her buffoonery....she makes the whole state seem dumb.

[Blue_In_AK]

5. Yes.

Yes, she does.

But one thing I can say for Alaskans -- we wised up before anyone else in the country did once she showed her true colors out on the national stage. We're probably more angry with her than anyone else in the country, too, because she totally played us during her campaign for governor and the two years she was our chief executive. The person she is now (which I believe is her TRUE personality) is not recognizable as the person she pretended to be as she was climbing to power.

I know people here at DU don't like the B word, but the truth is -- she's a two-faced bitch.

[Ken Burch]

10. Maybe THREE-faced.

n/t.

[Botany]

4. Alaska People know a fake person when they see one ....

.... she had Daddy load her rifle and work the action on her caribou hunt

.... she couldn't get a salmon on the line in a river w/ thousands of them, freaking TAWD got one on first cast

..... she has quit every job she has had ..... Alaska Oil & Gas Commission .... lots of #s and boring stuff

.... "We can see Russia from Alaska" ...... ah, no except for 2 islands in the Bering Sea one of which nobody lives
on and Little Diomede Island and she has never been there .... and also too :rofl:



Little Diomede Island

BTW just for fun
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x78384

BTW part 2 ..... How cold is it in your neighborhood right now?

[Blue_In_AK]

12. It's warmed up to 9 degrees.

It's been pretty cold, below zero, but it's warming now and we're expecting snow in the next few days. This is Anchorage. It's probably quite a bit warmer down in Juneau where Ken Burch is.

[gratuitous]

6. Yeah, but the media still cover her and cover for her

There was a report tonight on our local news about Medicare beginning to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling as a result of an administrative rule change. The local angle on it was Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who was one of the movers behind including that in health care reform commenting that he was glad to see end-of-life counseling now included in Medicare benefits (naturally, they also had some nitwit from the state Republican party complaining about "government interference" in doctor-patient relations, something the Republicans seem unconcerned about when the subject is abortion or birth control).

The report was quite good, interviewing a couple families who were going through the protracted death of a loved one, and how they appreciated knowing what the dear departing wanted. They also talked to a couple of hospital administrators, who talked about what a relief it often was for the family to have those wishes and instructions direct from the person when she could no longer speak for herself.

Over and over in the report, the newsreader talked about how "some" had labeled the end-of-life counseling as "death panels" without ever once mentioning a name. Buttkissers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. When we were there for our ten year anniversary

it was funny. The woman on the buss was singing her praises. I heard of Mrs Palin before most people in the lower 48. I wonder if that young lady is still peppering her tour of Juneau with now Joe Miller talk.

[Blue_In_AK]

13. Probably not.

When you were here, Sarah was still in her "popular" phase. She did have an 85% approval rating at one time, you'll remember. Which makes her 33% now even more delicious. :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. I remember... trust me I remember

I turend to my hubby and I said. got a bad feeling about this.

[Drale]

8. Someone in Alaska should invite her to go hunting,

since she claims to love it so much, and Dick Cheney her.

[cilla4progress]

11. My analogy

You know how when you see an amb-y-lance way up ahead on the highway, the lights, and the traffic starts jamming and there's a jam and you realize it's all 'cause everyone is slowing down, craning their necks to see the wreck?

That's Palin...the wreck.

[divine_truine]

17. she is truly a media skank & a cheapass opportunist...

I saw right through her schtick the second she was selected (&conveniently after Hillary lost the nomination). Sarah palin was/is a bad reality show in slow motion. When she started to throw her rotten meat out to all her adoring new fans somewhere in 'real' America (during the late spring- early summer of mccain's FAILED' presidential campaign), accusing then-senator obama of 'pallin' 'round w/ terrorists etc. that instantaneously sealed the deal for me. She seriously needs her ugly costume ripped from her body repeatedly until she disappears back into irrelevancy where she belongs. We also need to continuaLly hold our appalling msm accountable for elevating her heights she never deserved

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

21. conveniently after Hillary lost the nomination... shhh...our owners don't want us to remember that.

but I noticed this also.

[SpiralHawk]

18. 'Hate' is a pejoratively inaccurate way to describe Dem views on Palin

I think the use of that word in this context is just more republicon mind screw.

Dems see her as incompetent, ill-informed, arrogant, a quitter and a grifter. Kind of a typical republicon. So Dems are wary and disdainful, in general, but not hateful, I would argue. As well-established, hate & fear are much more on the Republicon Family Values side of things...

[KharmaTrain]

19. You Sure Did, Blue...

I remember your posts back in '07 about her and how she climbed over the Murkowskis...no wonder there's little love lost by Lisa who could end up being her worst nightmare.

The different between Mooselini of a year or two ago and now is that most rushpublicans would defend her...even the so-called "moderates" and party establishment cause she was this "fresh new face". Now they're defending her among those inside her inept and corrupt party.

This is her make or break year. If she's to be a serious candidate she'll have to clean up her act or face an embarassing flame out in the primaries as the other candidates turn her into a bigger laughing stock. In the meantime we'll have to deal with the obnoxious tweets and faux noise pyschobabble as she attempt to become "relevant".

Cheers and Happy New Year to you. Keep warm, and please keep those sub-zero temps up there...right now any cold will grab ahold of the jet stream and pour down over the lower 48. Keep those clippers in Alberta (we don't have any DU'ers there do we??).

[no_hypocrisy]

20. There's more to it than all listed.

The voters who put Palin into the office of the governor truly believed her and believed in her. When she campaigned, she described problems in Alaska and residents agreed with her. She promised to fix the problems and residents voted accordingly because they trusted her.

Then she was selected to be the republican VP candidate and that didn't work out. Her voters expected her to return to Alaska to continue to work on the problems she promised to fix. Except about nine months later, she up and left. She unilaterally decided that her personal mission took priority over the promises she made to Alaska. The problems remained after she left. They're still there.

If you were a "true believer", someone who voted for Sarah Palin, defended her against critics, and you realized she really doesn't care about you or Alaska, you'd feel used, fooled, maybe stupid.

So if Sarah Palin came to you in the future, asking for your support, it isn't likely you'd extend that support.

That's what I think is behind this poll.

[Blue_In_AK]

24. You've nailed it.

It was bad enough that at that convention speech she sounded so unlike the person who had run for and been elected as our governor (and I'm not kidding when I say that speech was jaw-dropping for us up here), but then when she came back, she refused to do her job and became such a diva. A lot of people felt totally betrayed and, frankly, like she had been using and manipulating us for the past two years. Or longer than that, actually, since she had started making a reputation as a corruption-buster when she worked on the Oil & Gas Commission. She had been buying her popularity by sponsoring progressive legislation with the Democrats in our legislature and then she sealed it by giving everyone a one-time energy rebate of $2,000, if I remember right, on top of our annual permanent fund dividend in the fall of 2007. I mean, if you go around handing out $2,000 to every man, woman and child in the state, that's bound to buy you some points.

She's just a user and a fraud, and I hope that every little bit of dirty laundry in her hamper gets aired out before she finally exits the political scene.

So, yes, while Weigel hit on some of the reasons that she's lost her popularity here, I don't think he was around the state long enough to really get a feel for all the nuances of our disgust.

[EstimatedProphet]

23. She's like Orly Taitz with less credibility