Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to readers: We sure screwed the pooch on those planned pay-for-access private dinners.

Sarah Palin: "It always feels good to do what is right."

TPM Reader MC checks in ...

Am I living in Bizarro world? Does anyone really think that there is any realistic way Palin could be a candidate for President after resigning as governor? Yet pundit after pundit is saying this is a "risky" move that "may pay off". This is absolutely preposterous, and any professional putting such ideas into print should be relegated to writing copy for infomercials. All one needs to do is imagine the campaign ads (Can we Trust S.P. to Finish What She Starts?; Palin Quits When She's Tired, Winners Quit When They're Done; or just string together a few clips from the Mistake by the Lake) to realize there is no recovering from this. This is no wily strategic move; it's running from a scandal.

As I said earlier, I think there's a small chance there's no specific scandal and that Palin is just very mentally unstable. But MC is 100% correct that any pundit who thinks this is some risky but potentially brilliant strategic move is absolutely smoking crack. Hitting the crack pipe, or, just as likely, being witlessly contrarian to set themselves apart from the common herd of sane people. The kinds of ads MC mentions are right on the mark. But they're really only the beginning.

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Gov. Palin releases a new statement explaining her sudden (which she says was not sudden at all) decision to resign her office little more than half way through her term of office.

Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, has also sent out a letter rejecting claims that Palin's resignation is tied to investigations of the Wasilla Sports Complex, during Palin's tenure as mayor, or their house on Lake Lucille. In the letter Van Flein also threatens defamation suits against Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, Huffpo, Washington Post, the NY Times and MSNBC for discussing these claims.

It seems like old times -- Barack Obama and John McCain release dueling messages on Independence Day. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Fourth of July Roundup.

Peter Ferrara, who says Palin's resignation is "a brilliant liberating move for her career, and a potential turning point for the national conservative movement," writes at FoxNews.com: "She should also lead the nation's mothers to oppose mandating replacement of incandescent light bulbs with the new mercury poison gas bulbs."

(Thanks to TPM Reader JB for the catch.)

TPM Reader LG:

Is it just me or does Palin's announcement of her leaving office remind anyone else of McCain's bizarre "I'm suspending my campaign" moment during the 2008 election run-up?

Each share several key components:

* Seems - on the face of it - very bizarre.
* Comes out of the blue
* A quickly arranged almost ad-hoc press conference delivers the news.
* Yet the announcement is pretty much that only - short on filler or any real reason on what he/she concretely hopes to accomplish by doing same.

I'm just saying ... maybe Palin was a good match for McCain. ...

We were talking amongst ourselves here yesterday afternoon about how difficult it will be to explain the Sarah Palin phenomenon in, say, 30 years to someone who didn't experience it.

It's a task made more difficult by the poor quality of the contemporaneous accounts, like this one from today's lead story in the Post:

Sarah Palin, the Republican Alaska governor who captivated the nation with a combative brand of folksy politics, announced her resignation yesterday in characteristic fashion: She stood on her back lawn in Wasilla, speaking into a single microphone, accompanied by friends and neighbors in baseball hats and polo shirts.

From that description, you'd think she were a latter-day Huey Long.

BEFORE:

Rod Dreher, Dallas Morning News, Sept. 7, 2008:

She's a fighter, this one. And worth fighting for. Come what may in November, we now know what the future of the GOP and the conservative movement looks like.

Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 4, 2008:

Sarah Palin may come from the backwoods of Alaska, but she has the heart of a street fighter.

Jim Wooten, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sept. 3, 2008:

Republicans want a fighter. I do believe they have one in Gov. Sarah Palin.

AFTER:

David Brody, CBN, today:

Oh and by the way, the last time I checked, her nickname is "Sarah Barracuda." Palin is a fighter.

Palin spokesperson Meghan Stapleton, quoted by the AP, today:

Palin remaining as governor is not good for Alaska, given the "political bloodsport" by her critics, Stapleton said. Stepping down is a "fighter's move," Stapleton said, essentially Palin stepping around political barriers in her way and pursuing her vision.

John McCain and his shrewd judge of character.

As David noted below, many commentators have taken little more than an hour to proceed from slack-jawed bewilderment to belief that Sarah Palin's unexplained resignation may be a political masterstroke.

For the moment there's no clear evidence of or explanation for some massive political or scandal bombshell that would have driven Palin from office. And it can be difficult not to allow the preposterous to become credible when many supposedly rational people are saying it.

But logic and common sense seldom fail as a guide to understanding politics. And the idea that Gov. Palin just up and decided for no reason in particular to resign her office little more than half way through her term, with a hastily assembled press conference and a rambling and histrionic speech, is just too silly for serious consideration. Another sign of the confusion on the inside are the comments reporters are getting from supposed Palin insiders. Palin insiders told Andrew Mitchell that Palin was "out of politics for good." But she told the Executive Director of the Republican Governors Association that she's resigning to campaign for more candidates in the continental US, work on her book, all with an eye to gearing up for her run for president in 2012. Call me cynical but it seems hard to reconcile those two explanations.

As with her speech itself, the tell is that the decision was apparently so rushed and sudden that there was not enough time to come up with a plausible cover story or to get out the word about what it was.

It looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Either Palin is resigning ahead of some titanic scandal (which should emerge in short order if it exists) or her resignation was triggered by an even more extreme mental instability than we'd previously suspected.

Perhaps the best part of Palin's announcement today:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.

Quitters stick to it. Winners quit.

At 4:06 ET, when news first broke that Sarah Palin was resigning the governorship, Fox News got Palin's Svengali, Bill Kristol, on phone who said he was "real surprised" by the decision. "[Y]ou know when I first heard it I thought that's a little crazy, giving up the governorship for a year and a half," Kristol told viewers.

What a difference an hour makes.

At 5:06 ET, Kristol posted on the Weekly Standard website: "If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one."

Is it a huge gamble or a shrewd move? Kristol leaves himself a big out there.

Late Update: Fox is coming around, too. A little while ago, Stuart Varney said, "Let's get back to this resignation," before pausing to correct himself. "Not the resignation but stepping aside from the governorship."

We've rounded up the Top 10 Sarah Palin videos we've posted on the site since her selection as McCain's veep last year. These are the most-viewed clips of her stumbles and bumbles and of the coverage surrounding her -- in all their viral loveliness.

Watch Sarah Palin's resignation announcement: Part 1 and Part 2.

Any stabs at identifying the other shoe that is certain to be dropping soon?

In other news, it seems our Top Seven Sarah Palin Moments of the last year slideshow may need some revising.

Here's the transcript of Gov. Palin's rambling resignation statement.

Andrea Mitchell says sources close to Gov. Palin say she is now "out of politics for good."

Okay, we're getting our first indication of what happened. It seems like a colossal sulk on Palin's part, or perhaps better to say an effort on her part to ingeniously combine anti-liberal media bias agitation with Christianist politics by portraying herself as having been crucified by the liberal media.

Said Palin, according to a reporter at the press conference, "You are naive if you don't see a full-court press on the national level, picking apart a good point guard."

More shortly.

3:52 PM ... So what happened exactly? As I just mentioned in our editorial chat, this clearly happened so quickly that Palin hasn't even had a chance to come up with a coherent cover story for her resignation. Some context is probably helpful here, however. Remember that based on the public record, Palin is a wildly unethical public official, guilty at a minimum of numerous instances of abusing her authority as governor. And a lot of very damaging information has come out about her in the last few days -- though mainly embarrassing information about her character rather than new evidence of bad acts. I would not be surprised if this latest round of revelations shook something else loose that we haven't heard about yet.

4:06 PM ... Wow. It just gets better and better. Apparently one of Palin's rationale's for resigning is that she would not stand by while so many taxpayer dollars were being spent investigating her. This from Politico has to be the best ...

Palin allies contend that her star power will still benefit her home state.

"She can be more of a help to Alaska from the outside now," said one Palin loyalist.

Now?

4:20 PM ... Hmmm. Even better. This is Gov. Palin's 'announcement', such as it is, on Twitter ...

We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election... this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy... it is good, stay tuned

She apparently didn't realize she was resigning yet. Stuff obviously moving pretty quickly ...