NRO Interview With Sarah Palin

NRO's Rich Lowry & Robert Costa talked with Sarah Palin Tuesday afternoon in what the authors described as "a wide-ranging and frank interview." Here are some excerpts:

She thinks President Obama’s bow to the emperor of Japan reflects an attitude that America should be “subservient to other countries”; characterizes Newt Gingrich’s thinking on NY-23 as reflective of a “political machine”; thinks that South Carolina voters should consider sending Sen. Lindsey Graham a message by supporting a conservative primary challenger; calls the media’s treatment of Carrie Prejean “unfair”; and says she would give John McCain “the benefit of the doubt” in their dispute over whether she was charged with fees for her vetting. And oh, yeah — her anonymous critics don’t have “guts,” and she’s not a David Brooks fan.

“That was a mistake,” Palin says of the Obama bow. “It was symbolic of, perhaps, our country being led to believe that we are subservient to other countries.” She says she would “like to see us head more in the direction of Ronald Reagan’s thinking — knowing that we are a very, very blessed nation and a superpower.” She adds, “We can get there through a position of strength and not believing that we have to kowtow or bow to anybody.” Asked if she would have bowed, she replies, “No, sir.”

[...]

“As for Lindsey, individually, I really like him,” she says. “His constituents may want to send him a message to say ‘shore it up’ and come back to some more commonsense, conservative ideals.”

She suggests, meanwhile, that there might be encouraging news coming Marco Rubio’s way. She says she’s had a chance to look at the Crist-Rubio race “just on the surface.” But she adds, “I’m just being asked about it really in the last week or two, so I’ll dig more into it. I’ll find out what the guys are holding in terms of positions and see where maybe I can help.”

On 2010 in general, “I would like to help whoever is bold enough and has a stiff enough spine to make the right decisions,” she says. “I’d be happy to help on a district and state level, and a local level, too. Change starts on the local level — that’s imperative. And I will help anybody who asks me.”

Read the complete NRO Sarah Palin interview here.

- JP