The political career of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been marked by conflicts, score-settling and her own claim that she faces “enemies – powerful enemies.”
She and her right-wing supporters have tried to frame her as a reformer who has taken on corruption in Alaska. However, an examination of her career as a small-town mayor and inexperienced governor reveals an official prone to petty squabbles and personal retaliation.
In 1996, after winning the election to be mayor of Wasilla, then a town with a population of 5,000, Palin sought to oust six department heads because they had signed a letter supporting the previous mayor, their old boss.
Palin ultimately fired two of them, the police chief and the museum director, and pushed two others into quitting.
In 1997, some residents considered her actions so high-handed that they tried to initiate a recall election.
“Four months of turmoil have followed in which almost every move by Palin has been questioned,” the Associated Press reported in a Feb. 11, 1997 dispatch. “Critics argue the [Palin] decisions are politically motivated.”
Wasilla’s ousted police chief, Irl Stambaugh, sued Palin that year for alleged contract violation, wrongful termination and gender discrimination The police chief claimed Palin fired him not for cause but for being disloyal and because he was a man whose size – 6 feet and 200 pounds – intimidated her.
However, the recall election never got off the ground, and a federal judge rejected Stambaugh’s lawsuit.
Vendettas
Following her two terms as mayor of Wasilla, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican lieutenant governor nomination in 2002.
Then, as chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she fell into a public spat with fellow commissioner Randy Ruedrich, the state’s GOP chairman.
In 2003, she reported Ruedrich to Gov. Frank Murkowski’s administration, saying she suspected him of an ethics breach in conducting work for the state GOP on government time.
To obtain evidence of Ruedrich’s alleged malfeasance, Palin hacked into his computer, an ethical lapse in its own right. She resigned from the commission in January 2004.
But Palin’s ethics complaint against Ruedrich gave her a reputation as an anti-establishment reformer at a time when the Alaskan Republican hierarchy was coming under scrutiny for corruption.
For two years, she stayed out of politics, acquiring a business license for a marketing and consulting company named Rogue Cou, “a classy way of saying redneck,” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in a June 2005 interview.
Palin also faced questions about hypocrisy in the vendetta that she waged against Ruedrich when it turned out that, as mayor of Wasilla, she had used her office computer for political purposes.
“We wondered how her using a city computer to run for lieutenant governor in 2002 was different than Republican Party chief Randy Ruedrich using Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission computers for party business, for which he was fined and resigned under pressure. She said it was different,” the Anchorage Daily News wrote in a July 14, 2006, editorial.
“In a release [Palin] fired off to everyone she could think of after the questions, she huffed about a ‘smear’ campaign organized by her ‘enemies -- powerful enemies.’ Later, there were references on various radio talk shows to whispering campaigns and other craziness, but we wrote that off as the vapors and a touch of paranoia.”
The editorial continued: “She characterized as ‘innocuous’ her political e-mails sent on a city computer to the Alaska Outdoor Council and another complaining about the Right to Life folks not choosing her as their candidate in the 2002 race.
“That was bad enough, indicating she just does not get it, but then she had this to say: ‘We've had lots of people come forward with dirt on (gubernatorial candidate John) Binkley . . . as well as dirt on (Gov. Frank) Murkowski. We've told them to bury it. I'm not running that type of campaign.’
“Apparently, that is exactly the kind of vicious campaign the former two-term Wasilla mayor is running. In our view, that kind of backdoor character assassination is the most scurrilous type of attack.” the Anchorage Daily News wrote. “Oh, I have dirt, Palin says smugly, yes, indeedy; but I'll not give the details because that would be wrong. She is right. It is very wrong. It is very much the hallmark of lightweight politicians in over their heads.”
***************************************************
This is seriously the best thing for the GOP, for this Bimbo Skank to resign. She IMO is what really put the nail in the coffin for McBush's run for President, seriously WTF where they thinking when they put here as his running mate. 
