Sarah Palin returns to a chillier Alaska

Here is an excellent story to see how the media works it's magic. The media wanted to stop Governor Palin and now they want to prevent her from being able to run nationally again, or else to at least damage her enough permanently that she will not pose as serious a threat to democrat politics as she did this time, dragging the uninspiring John McCain to a still impressive 46% (considering). Reading this article you notice that they still reference "troopergate", ignoring that she was formally cleared on November third, days before this article was written, all in all the story follows the common practice of sounding dire and negative without posing any facts, even the writer acknowledges that she has an incredibly high 65% approval rate (Gov. Arnold for instance is at 38% and Romney's was 43% in his last year). Have we ever seen them follow a candidate so closely after an election? We are still waiting for our first investigative stories on Biden and Obama, even McCain is off the radar. WM

The governor's approval ratings have fallen since she joined the campaign trail. She'll have to mend fences over Troopergate, budget concerns and her national 'pit bull' image.
Los Angeles Times By Kim Murphy November 7, 2008

Reporting from Anchorage -- On election day, a smiling Sarah Palin touched down briefly on home turf at Wasilla City Hall to cast her vote, declaring how much she was looking forward to waking up in "transition mode" as vice president. Then she headed off to spend election night in Arizona with Sen. John McCain.

One day later, Palin was on a plane back to Alaska, this time to pick up where she left off before joining McCain's presidential campaign: as the state's overwhelmingly popular governor, praised for her bipartisanship by Democratic allies in the state Capitol, championed for her fight for ethics reform and presiding over a state with, thanks to soaring oil prices, a multibillion-dollar surplus

But wait -- what fairy tale is that? After several months co-starring with its governor in one of the hardest-fought presidential campaigns in modern U.S. history, America's 49th state bears little resemblance to the friendly, folksy place Palin left in August.

With her vice-presidential carriage turned back into a pumpkin, Palin faces a return to a state rife with hard feelings, a sagging budget and rising political uncertainty. Will its powerful veteran U.S. senator hold on to his job despite a felony corruption conviction? And what can Palin do about her home-grown political adversaries, some of them showing a gleeful appetite for torpedoing whatever national political ambitions the governor may harbor?

Palin's approval ratings in Alaska, once in the stratospheric 80% range, have tumbled to a mere mortal 65%. A minor dust-up over the firing of her former public safety commissioner has blossomed into two full "Troopergate" investigations, with some lawmakers threatening to lead off the coming legislative session by sending some of Palin's senior aides to jail. Click on the title for the full article