Is Palin the Future of the Republican Party?

Before President-elect Obama even took the oath of High Office, Governor Palin was inviting the media into her home for a series of interviews to set the record straight. Her purpose was to let the public know that she resented the rumors spread by anonymous sources from the McCain campaign about her and her behavior on the campaign trail, and to deny that she was a drag on the ticket. Perhaps, most important was to throw her cap in the ring as the Grand Old Party’s candidate for President in 2012.

In her first interview after the elections, Palin stated that she hopes God will “show her the way” to the White House in 2012. “I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is.”

“Even if it’s cracked up a little bit, maybe I’ll plough right on through that and maybe prematurely plough through it, but don’t let me miss an open door,” she told Fox interviewer and host, Greta Sustern, who spent two days with Palin in her home office.

Trash Talk

Other notable features of the interview, as reported by the British newspaper, The Guardian, were Palin’s responses to criticism from top McCain campaign staff members that she and her family were “Wasilla hillbillies who looted Neiman Marcus, coast to coast.” According to Palin, she did not ask for the $150,000 worth of clothes and accessories, and she lays the blame for misperceptions about her on the media, for not correcting the “garbage” from anonymous campaign staffers who she claimed leaked false information about her to all the media.

Palin also denied that she didn’t know Africa was a continent not a country or that South Africa was a country not a region. “Never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is Africa a country or is it a continent,” she stated, and went on to blame all the damaging allegations made against her on liberal commentators, “those bloggers in their parents’ basements just talkin’ garbage.” Palin added, “Even if I went off script once in a while, I can’t for the life of me remember any one time where it would have harmed the ticket.”

Perhaps not, but just days after the election, the Secret Service of the United States, the special force responsible for the safety of the President and Vice-President, publicly blamed Sarah Palin for a surge in death threats against Barack Obama in the final weeks of the campaign. Palin’s demogogic accusations that Obama was “palling around with terrorists,” citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers, provoked a “lynch mob attitude” during Palin’s rallies, a spokesman for the service revealed to Newsweek magazine, with supporters at her rallies yelling “terrorist” and “kill him,” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down her rhetoric. But now it appears that her wild statements encouraged white supremacists to make threats against Obama’s life and actually plan some attacks. These and other revelations are cited in Newsweek magazine’s history of the 2008 Presidential campaign, now available.

For a chronicle of what really went on in the 2008 campaign, visit Newsweek’s Secrets of the Campaign. In it, you will find the documented true story of the Palin shopping sprees and the Secret Service alarms over the affects of Palin’s fiery campaign rhetoric, among many other, newly revealed eye-witness secrets.

Where To Now?

Capping off a week of intensive post-campaign media coverage, which included Fox News, NBC’s Today Show and CNN’s Larry King Show, in an attempt to remake her damaged image, Governor Palin ended the week at a meeting of conservative Republican Governors in Miami, that will begin the process of finding a new leader for the party and a candidate for the 2012 elections. Palin is defended staunchly by Southern Republican governors who compare her to Ronald Reagan in the excitement she inspires in a crowd, according to Jonathan Martin of Politico.

Palin has been mentioned as a candidate for Senator Ted Stevens seat, if he wins his Senate seat (the election vote count is not over at this writing), but is forced to resign by the Congress because he was convicted of seven felony counts in the waning days of the campaign. If Stevens loses his seat, Palin could run for it in a special election. If not, she could seek re-election in 2010, or challenge Senator Lisa Murkowski for her Senate seat, that year.

Although Palin has faced a storm of criticism, the media is having a field day tracking her every move and word. We haven’t heard the last of Sarah Palin, so stay tuned. We will publish updates as there is more news to report. Meanwhile, we welcome your comments.