Despite bickering with the state Legislature, she probably would have been re-elected next year, and may have done serious damage to her political aspirations by stepping down now, according to Ivan Moore, an independent pollster in Anchorage, Alaska. "I don't minimize how she is revered by the Republican right, nationally" Moore said. "But at the end of the day, to become president she's going to have to convince that 5 percent or 10 percent of people in the middle, ideologically, that she and McCain didn't convince last year, and those people are not going to be impressed that in her first four years sitting in high office she quit halfway through." Full Article at Baltimore Sun