When the Republican National Convention kicks off Monday in Tampa, the star of the 2008 GOP gathering, Sarah Palin, will be 2,000 miles away in Arizona, campaigning for congressional candidates. But don't bet against the former Alaska governor finding a bit of the limelight anyway.
Palin will be in
little Gilbert, Ariz., helping serve up barbecue Monday afternoon
alongside congressional hopeful Kirk Adams and later stumping for a
couple of incumbent Republican congressmen, Jeff Flake and Paul Gosar.
If Palin will miss being at the big dance with Mitt Romney and other Republicans in Florida, she showed no sign of it in a Fox News
interview Saturday. She chatted merrily about her plans for the coming
days, in the familiar sing-song cadences (and run-on, multiclause
sentences) that became her trademark in 2008.
“I’m making sure to get out there around the country,”
Palin said, “and sometimes supporting underdogs — those that are
underfunded, underpresented in terms of name recognition and surrogates
out there on the political scene — making sure that those that need to
be put on the map — because their message is the right message and their
intentions are right — are heard from.”
A viewer
unhappy with both sides in the presidential campaign asked whether they
should simply not vote. Palin urged the woman to “give Romney a shot,”
stressing the importance of removing President Obama and ending his policies, including the healthcare law she called “the mother of all unfunded mandates.”
Asked
about the potential creation of a third party, Palin offered a bit of
history and said it could happen again someday if Republicans don’t
adhere to their principles.
“You know in studying
history, look what happened in the mid-1800s when the Whig Party went
away and the Republican Party surfaced because people, the electorate,
got sick and tired of both parties fighting for power and [not] doing
the will of the people,” Palin said. “That’s why the Republican Party
rose up.
“So, you know, if history is any indication,
it’s certainly a possibility at some point if Republicans don’t
remember what the planks in their platform represent. And the planks in
the platform are all about equality. They are about equal opportunity,
to prosper and thrive in the most exceptional nation in the world, and
how do we do that through a free market .”
That’s the way she said it. And with a smile.
Another
viewer wondered whether Palin, who quit office before her term was
over, would run for governor of Alaska again. The viewer got the
opposite of a “you betcha” response.
“I would much
rather be able to work on unlocking Alaska’s vast resources,” Palin
said, “the largest state in the union, so rich in oil and gas and zinc
and iron and copper and gold and the world’s richest wild seafood
fisheries in … on our planet. I would rather work on unlocking our
resources to help secure our nation for solvency for our sovereignty as a
union than be holed up in Juneau again.”
So the star of Convention 2008 makes her way modestly into the brave new world of Convention 2012, where a new V.P. star, Paul D. Ryan, is due to be crowned. Far from the center stage, she’s bound to still find her way into the conversation.
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