Palin resigns as Alaska Governor

Last year's Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska, fuelling speculation that she is positioning herself to run for president in 2012.

In a rambling and ambiguous news conference on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, she said she would step down at the end of this month. "We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction," she added.

Some observers believe she is getting out of politics for good, the pressures of media scrutiny of her politics and her family having proved too much. Some wonder if she might be quitting before another as-yet-unknown scandal erupts. But most believe she has her eye on a bigger prize than Alaska.

Republican strategist Tony Blankley said that it made sense for Palin to resign if she wants to run for the presidency. If she aims to court the Republican faithful nationally she will need to spend more time in Washington - and Alaska is several time zones and a day's travel from the capital.

But other prominent Republicans were not convinced that quitting as governor midterm is a sound idea. "I'm not smart enough to see the strategy in this," said party strategist John Weaver. Another senior Republican player, Ed Rollins, said Palin had made a serious mistake. "She was a shooting star who dimmed in recent months and now she's crashed," he said.

They were speaking against the background of continued criticism of the 45-year-old governor's sometimes bizarre behaviour, her extreme political beliefs and the feeling that she has allowed her family to become a living soap opera.

Also, as The First Post reported earlier this week, there has been a considerable buzz in Washington about a new Vanity Fair profile by Todd S Purdum. Based on interviews with officials from John McCain's failed presidential campaign and figures from Palin's past, it painted her as ignorant, vindictive and narcissistic.

In the article, titled 'It Came From Wasilla', Purdum claimed that many on Palin's vice-presidential campaign team worked for her even though they had "privately realised she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency".

As for her political opponents, her resignation was quickly dismissed as yet another "flaky" Palin move. "She is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry," said a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, "or she simply can't handle the job".