I don't have any deep insight into why Governor Palin decided to step down, but I think there is at least one possibility that we can rule out: Max Blumenthal. The blogger takes credit for her decision in a column for the Daily Beast:
On July 1, CBS reported that a story authored by me and journalist David Neiwert for Salon.com in October 2008 about Palin's ties to a secessionist political party caused her deep personal distress, and provoked a rancorous series of exchanges with her campaign manager, Steve Schmidt. Coupled with a withering profile of Palin published in the August 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, the new round of exposés may have been too much for Palin to stomach.
The arrogance of that paragraph, even for a blogger, is striking. There is no evidence of "deep personal distress" from Blumenthal's shoddy reporting and CNN's subsequent decision to amplify it. At the time I spoke to a producer at CNN who seemed to be experiencing genuine "deep personal distress" at his network's decision to run the segment. And I know Governor Palin's office was bothered by the Vanity Fair piece, but no more so than the countless hit pieces just like it that have come out in the last 10 months.
Blumenthal, however, just can't help but credit his own Pravda-style reporting with affecting the course of human history. Just a month ago he was personally taking credit for the Israeli government's decision to demolish an illegal outpost in the West Bank -- coupled with other factors, of course. He wrote at the time, "Netanyahu had issued a list of 26 illegal outposts he planned to demolish -- an unsuccessful tactic to mollify the Obama administration -- but Hilltop 26 was not among them. Dana attributed the sudden demolition to intense coverage of the controversy, particularly my video for the Daily Beast and an editorial he authored for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz."
I would like to take this opportunity to take credit for President Obama's decision to continue the Bush administration policy of indefinite detention, to take a harder line on Iran, and to add additional troops to the war in Afghanistan. I've written some really awesome stuff on those issues, causing the president "deep personal distress." Even Continetti says so.
