TIME's Jay Newton-Small interviews Gov. Palin

"We need to start really living within our means."
*
As part of a long feature article on the prospective 2012 presidential candidate, TIME's Jay Newton-Small interviewed Gov. Palin and got some of the most definitive answers from her yet on why she believes she could beat Obama and how she would govern as president:

Asked via e-mail what she would do if elected, Palin carefully says the first priority "of the next Republican President" should be "to sign a bill for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare with true free-market, patient-centered reform." Obamacare's repeal, she adds, "would help to cut future deficits. It would also send a strong signal to America's workers and employers that government is back on their side and is no longer seeking to impose its one-size-fits-all 'solutions' from above." Palin says she would "also look for entitlement reform, as well as a systemwide audit of government spending with a goal to move us toward zero-based budgeting practices and, ultimately, a balanced budget. We need to start really living within our means. As any mother or father will tell you, don't spend what you don't have."

Palin implies that she is unworried by the way she has become a lightning rod to both the right and the left. "My positions are not at all controversial. The majority of Americans agree with me across the board on the issues. I think it's a personal thing that probably stems from media demonization of me and mischaracterization of what I stand for," she says. "Shoot, if I read and believed all the lies these guys write about me, I wouldn't like me either!"

Such statements suggest that Palin may get into the race just to set the record straight. Her new book — a folksy mashup of Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Calvin Coolidge, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — argues that the U.S. under Obama has lost its sense of pride and come unhinged from the values of family and small government. She continues to attack the Washington crowd, by which she pointedly means both Democrats and Republicans. Palin has used this playbook before. When she ran for governor of Alaska, she abruptly resigned her chairmanship of the statewide board on oil and gas conservation to protest the commission's corruption and then launched a revolt against the "boys' club" in Juneau. She is poised to run a similar play against GOP insiders in Washington. "Some in the GOP establishment have a problem with me because I've been taking on the good-ol'-boy network for a couple of decades now," she says, "and some of the good ol' boys obviously don't like it."

Palin has time on her side. Her popularity among conservatives means that she can wait until the last minute — perhaps as late as a year from now — before jumping into the Republican sweepstakes. And she could raise millions of dollars overnight.

[...]

Palin thinks Obama is vulnerable, and she implies that she is the one to take him on. "In battleground states, he's polling at 40% or below," she notes. "The country is rejecting his agenda ... My vision of America is diametrically opposed to his. He sees America as the problem. I see America as the solution." Asked what she makes of Obama's presidency thus far, Palin quipped, "Two words: Jimmy Carter." Asked who can beat him, she needed seven more: "Someone who can draw a sharp contrast."

[More]

- JP

Newton-Small: Sarah Palin Can Be Frontrunner or Kingmaker in 2012

If wants to run, she is the front runner for the nomination
*
TIME's Jay Newton-Small talks about Gov. Palin's new book and her political prospects for 2012 with Bill Plante of CBS News on Washington Unplugged:


- JP

Jay Newton-Small: Sarah Palin Is Winning

*
Jay Newton-Small reminds TIME readers that in the aftermath of her resignation just a little over a year ago, the elites on both the left and right had written off Sarah Palin:

What a difference a year makes.

Palin is now more popular nationally, more in demand by conservative groups as a speaker and far richer than she's ever been. She has earned an estimated $9 million by talking and writing — her first book ended up being a best seller, thank you very much — and she has inked a reported $1 million annual contract with Fox News. Oh, and she's become the most important independent endorser in a generation: her 16-11 win-loss record in the recent GOP primaries gives her a lot of political chits to call in if — just to suppose — she were to weigh a presidential run.

This fall, as Palin looks out over Lake Lucille, she has just wrapped a reality show about Alaska (pocketing $2 million for the effort), she is penning a second book, and her every tweet is devoured by the same media that often scorn her. How, exactly, did this happen? How did Palin, with no official platform and winning little more than disdain from the GOP establishment — and contempt from the Obama-friendly media — make such a comeback? After all, she isn't just proving herself to the snobs in Washington; she's leading an insurgency against them. And she's winning.

What many of these elites fail to realize is that Gov. Palin is doing many of the things she's done throughout her entire politic career, not the least of which is fighting corruption:

"Everyone thought her political career was dead when she resigned the [oil and gas] commission," recalls Gregg Erickson, founding editor of the Alaska Budget Report, which tracks politics in the capital of Juneau. "But she won not only on her charisma but the solid credentials of having stood up successfully to the corrupt power structure in Alaska." He senses echoes of that past today. "There certainly seem to be parallels with what she's doing now."

[...]

After flirting with Washington, she retreated to Alaska and became more involved with, and [became] a de facto leader of, the Tea Party movement. There is a synergy between the Tea Party and Palin that has inflated each side, accelerated by the evolving 24-7 news cycle that has covered each nonstop.

She has backed a number of candidates [Newton small get the numbers wrong] including several with Tea Party support:

While many — Alaska's Joe Miller, Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul in Kentucky, among them — were originally deemed outside the mainstream, Palin has helped change that river's course. All three won their GOP primaries against more moderate candidates.

[...]

Washington pundits are already scoffing at the idea of a Palin candidacy, especially at the notion that her GOP giant-killing makes her the one to beat. Palin's "the front runner?" asked the New York Times' Douthat last weekend. "That's bunkum." But if she has proven anything this year, it's her ability to surprise — and beat expectations.

The full Newton-Small TIME article is here.

- JP

Jay Newton-Small: Palin's Haul

*
At Swampland, TIME's political blog, Jay Newton-Small chortles over the feigned shock and awe being expressed inside the Beltway Monday in reaction to the SarahPAC 2010 Q2 FEC report. The TIME blogger says that, unlike many of his lamestream media colleagues, he's always believed that Gov. Palin would run in 2012. The conventional wisdom has been that she couln't do it without the staff, advisors, pollsters and PAC money, plus she hasn't been making the required pilgrimages to Iowa and New Hampshire like some of the others have:

Well, she now has the money and her string of endorsements, including a prominent one in Iowa, could set her up nicely for the 2012 primary season. Her staff remains small, but have been effective, witness her video last week. And, frankly, in an anti-incumbent year there's no incentive for Palin to be seen courting establishment types in DC. Instead, she's been using her celebrity to court the Tea Party and they love her for it. As the Washington Republican establishment is learning the hard way this cycle: it takes Republican base voters to win GOP primaries (hello Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Sharron Angle).

In many ways, Palin's moves mirror her run for governor. She came from the outside, taking down the GOP establishment, including the formidable Governor Frank Murkowski. She stayed on the outside for months, not bothering to build a campaign but delivering key speeches across the state attacking “the old boys club” that raised speculation she'd potentially run. And, finally, when she did announce her campaign burst into life fully formed.

Well, what can we say? She had us going on about how she hadn't been building state organizations, mailing lists, etc. too. But if the governor is going to run, and we we end up being proven wrong, we won't be a bit disappointed over it. As a matter of fact, we'll be smiling like the cat that just polished off a rat.



- JP