"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired."
...
"The governor let her husband, Todd, use the governor's office and its resources, "including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired .... She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act."
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"[Palin] knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda."
Pretty damning stuff. Not surprisingly, both the McCain campaign and Palin's personal lawyer blasted the report, claiming that it was fatally tainted by the political leanings of the state senator in charge of the inquiry, Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat, and the special investigator who issued the findings. In fact, in an attempt to preempt the official findings, the McCain campaign actually released its own report on Troopergate which absolved Governor Palin and her husband of any wrong-doing.
Reflecting on the report for a moment, it speaks very poorly for Sarah Palin. Palin, working through her husband -- who, incidentally, is not a state employee -- as well as her staff, tried over and over to put pressure on government officials to fire a state worker as part of a personal vendetta. There is no other word for it: this was a vendetta of the worst kind, and Palin nakedly abused her power to get the trooper fired. This is not a person who has the temperment, intelligence, or plain politcal skill to be President or Vice President; heck, one could make a strong argument that she is clearly unqualified to be governor of Alaska!
These findings were not at all unexpected, which is why Palin decided to completely stonewall the inquiry shortly after being selected to be McCain's running mate, counter to her promises to cooperate fully in the matter. Since Palin was first tapped, the GOP campaign went on an offensive to totally discredit the report by going after Senator French and others. They knew this report, which was initially scheduled to be released in late October, would reflect very poorly on Palin, her professionalism, and her political judgment.
Unfortunately for the GOP ticket, the tactic does not seem to have fully worked. While the report did come out on a Friday afternoon/evening, it has been all over the Internet both last night and early today. This morning, after a run, I went by the Newseum in Washington, DC, and perhaps around forty percent of the papers had Troopergate splashed on their frontpages, many with headlines using the words "Palin", "abused", and "powers" in the same sentence. This story will not help the fledgling GOP campaign.
In the end, though, it really won't matter much. The McCain campaign is at its lowest point, and Gov. Palin's approval ratings have been startlingly bad for some time -- and falling. Let's look at some data sets to see how the trendlines are looking. First, let's examine R2K's daily tracker (which means, as you know, the data is averaged over a three-day period) for Daily Kos over the last ten days:
10/1: 41 percent favorable, 52 percent unfavorable
10/2: 40/53
10/3: 42/52
10/4: 41/51
10/5: 40/51
10/6: 39/51
10/7: 39/52
10/8: 39/53
10/9: 37/54
10/10: 37/55
10/11: 36/56
In the last ten days, we see that Palin went from a -11 overall, to a -20 today. Minus 20 points. Conversely, today's tracker finds Biden at 58/30, or +28 -- a very strong rating from the national electorate. Over this period, Palin's favorable number rose only once, on 10/3, quickly beginning to fall back yet again the next day.
Even if you disagree with the exact data, which is fair as some polls are better than others, or if you don't like that R2K is working for a liberal blogger, which I think is silly for reasons I have already outlined, the trends don't lie. The trends here for Palin are horriful, a combination of both horrible and awful. There is nothing positive to take away from this precipitous drop.
Let the record show that the vice presidential debate was on Thursday, October 2. As we yelled at the top of our lungs after the debate, there was no way Palin was going to come out of the affair on top, and clearly, she did not. People did not buy her painfully transparent Fargo routine. It wasn't just embarrassing to me.
Lest you think we rely too much on R2K, let's looking at the same tracking data over the same time period from out friends at Diego/Hotline, who, as we know, have their own reputable tracking poll:
10/1: 46/32
10/2: 45/40
10/3: 45/39
10/4: 47/39
10/5: 47/39
10/6: 50/39
10/7: 50/40
10/8: 50/40
10/9: 46/43
10/10: 45/42
10/11: Not yet released
Diego/Hotline's data is different from R2K's, particularly in Palin's overall level of support. Also, it gives Palin's a bump of support over the middle period (last week) of the polling here. However, the trendlines are not terribly different over the same time period. Palin went from +14 on the first day of the month to +3 yesterday. We don't have the data yet today. That's a movement of 11 points, which is actually two more points than the overall drop we see in R2K. Forgetting the exact numbers for a moment, the momentum (or lack thereof) here is perhaps worse.
Looking at these numbers, it is hard to believe that the Troopergate report will really have an enormous impact. The fact is that Palin's numbers were already bad and sinking even before yesterday. People just do not like her. We don't need to reflect on the (many) reasons for this, it is what it is. Sure, the report may push her even further down, but at this point it may not matter. Palin is clearly a liability for the Republican ticket.
That last statement is really a reflection on an astonishing turn of events. In a month, Palin has gone from McCain's hugest asset, to perhaps his greatest liability. She may be stoking the GOP base still -- if these rallies are any indication -- but she is bringing zero support from anywhere else. So, while this report can only inflict more damage on what is a sinking campaign, Palin's approval ratings already appear beyond repair with just 24 days until election day (and, incidentally, with voting already going on in some states).
One more thing. While it is unlikely Palin will be impeached for this, as Alaska's House is controlled by the Republicans and Alaska is still very Republican-leaning, Palin could still face very dire consequences for her behavior. As we wrote last week, if Palin goes home following a landslide defeat, the bloom will be off her rose, even in her own backyard. Her enemies will feel no problem going hard after her even harder, and even her allies might feel less compulsion to blindly support her. The days of 90 percent approval ratings will likely be gone, and Palin will need to be very careful to maintain her political standing. It's a sad truth that Americans don't love a political loser, and that is just what Palin will be, making her totally vulnerable.
I would wager that come election day, Alaska will be much closer than people think. Look for Obama to get close to 45 percent, which is no small feat for a Democrat running in Alaska. Palin's approval rating, even at home, can't be good right now. Indeed, the latest Ivan Moore poll found that by a slim margin, Alaskans polled felt that Biden actually won the vice presidential debate. I think that that says it all for Palin's current standing at home.
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