The lame-ducks are coming out of the pond to squawk about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's abrupt resignation - in the middle of her first term.
Gov. Rendell - with 18 months left in his second term - was one of them.
Though it's hard to imagine Rendell is not thinking of a quiet island far from the Capitol as he and the General Assembly head into Day Seven of the budget standoff of 2009, he took to the airwaves to castigate Palin for her "ridiculous rationale" for resigning and for abandoning her state during a fiscal crisis.
Here's what he told MSNBC as reported by The Huffington Post:
"To resign after two-and-a-half years in office and somehow to say that she was going to be a lame duck and lame ducks can't get anything done and governors just go on junkets during her lame-duck period is ridiculous. First of all, she's a first-term governor, not a term-limited, second-term governor, and if she hadn't announced she was leaving, she wouldn't have been a lame duck, she would have been in a pretty strong executive position, number one. Number two, this is not the time for governors to abandon their states.... Everyone of us is facing severe financial challenges brought about by the international recession and this is not a time to leave. We pledged to our folks when we asked them to elect to us, we pledged that we were going to serve four years and we serve in the good years, but we also serve in the bad years as well. And for her to leave and turn the state over to a lieutenant governor with less than a month's notice, in the midst of difficult financial times, I think it's just dead wrong."
"Again," Rendell added, "had she just said I'm not running for re-election and announced that, I think that would perfectly fine. But she's really abandoning her state at a very difficult time. And I appreciate the pressures on family. All of us in public life have that. You guys in the media have the same pressures. I appreciate all of that, but I think she made the wrong decision to leave her state. If you want to help Alaskans, lead during tough and challenging times."
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