Alaska Senate Saga: The psychopathic egotism of Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If you haven't been following the bizarre saga of the effort to name a replacement for departed Alaska State Senator Kim Elton, who took a job with the Obama Administration at the Interior Department, make sure to read this overview by TNR's Chris Orr.

Basically:

-- Elton is a Democrat. His replacement must be a Democrat.

-- Senate Democrats sent a name to Gov. Sarah Palin.

-- Palin rejected that candidate and came back with the name of an unacceptable quasi-Democrat (a registered Republican, but perhaps by mistake).

-- Senate Democrats proposed three new names.

-- Palin, after trying unsuccessfully to change the rules so that Senate Republicans could vote on the replacement as well, rejected those candidates and came back, once again, with an unacceptable name.

-- Senate Democrats and Republicans proposed former Juneau Mayor Dennis Egan, a suitable compromise.

-- Palin rejected Egan and came back with not one but three candidates, including the first two she proposed and a non-Democrat (and hence someone who by law can't be tapped to fill the position) to whom Palin is somehow connected.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Not the Democrats, who are doing what they are supposed to be doing and acting in nothing but good faith, and not the Republicans, who are working with Democrats to achieve bipartisan consensus, but Palin, who is being -- as you might expect -- a self-interested partisan obstructionist and who has been conducting herself with nothing but shameless indignity throughout this entire process, essentially giving Democrats (and even Republicans, those working with the Democrats) the finger.

The latest development is that Senate Democrats are, quite rightly refusing to accept Palin's three unacceptable candidates: "'There is nothing for us to vote on, there is no appointment,' said Senate Judiciary Chairman Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat. 'The governor has taken an unusual course which is outside the law and leaves us no choice but to ignore what she's done.'"

That's the key here: Palin is acting outside the law.

And what she's doing, and how she's doing it, isn't just "unusual," it's almost psychopathic in its fuck-you egotism. Maybe she's being partisan, maybe she just wants to make a point, maybe she's trying to enhance her authority -- whatever the case, this is yet more evidence not just of how irresponsible she is as a governor but of what kind of arrogant thug and ignorant twit she really is.