Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that she would consider a run for the White House in 2012 “if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family.”
“It would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country,” Palin told Chris Wallace on Fox News on Sunday, in an interview recorded a few hours before she gave the keynote address at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. “I won’t close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.”
Those words were buttressed by the response she received at the convention on Saturday night. As Palin left the stage, the crowd erupted into chants of “Run, Sarah, Run.”
Palin gave the Tea Party crowd exactly what it wanted, declaring the primacy of the Tenth Amendment in limiting government powers, complaining about the bailouts and the “generational theft” of rising deficits and urging the audience to back conservative challengers in contested primaries.
“America is ready for another revolution!” she told the crowd, prompting the first of several standing ovations.
While Palin told Fox News that she approved of US President Barack Obama’s strengthening of the US military force in Afghanistan, she was dismissive of his decision to try some high-profile terrorism suspects in civilian courtrooms in the US. She called on Attorney General Eric Holder, who formally made that decision, to resign.
In the Fox interview, Wallace took note of a poll showing Palin leading other potential Republican candidates with 16 percent of the respondents and asked if she was more knowledgeable on domestic and foreign matters now than during her run in 2008 as the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
“I would hope so,” she said.
Before Palin was chosen as Senator John McCain’s running mate, she said, her “engagement was with the state of Alaska” and such issues as increasing energy production. She was often criticized during that campaign as being ignorant on critical policy matters.
“Now that my focus has been enlarged, I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues,” she said during the interview.
For Palin, the weekend was filled with renewed speculation about her political future.
She left Nashville for Texas, where she spent part of Sunday on the stump with Governor Rick Perry.
“I doubt there is another public figure in our country who gives liberals a bigger case of the hives than our special guest today,” said Perry, who is facing a March 2 primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. “At the very mention of her name, the liberals, the progressives, the media elites — they literally foam at the mouth.”
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