WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defeated Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said she hopes God will "show her the way" before she decides on any future bid for the White House.
The Alaska governor declined to say whether she was planning to run for the US presidency in four years, stating in an exclusive interview Monday with the Fox News Channel that 2012 remained too far off.
"I can't predict what's going to happen a day from now, much less four years from now," Palin said in the interview.
However the devoutly religious 44-year-old mother-of-five said that if God wanted her to run for the highest office, she hoped to be shown the way.
"You know, I have -- faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator's hands -- this is what I always do," said Palin, who served as running mate to Senator John McCain.
"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," she added.
"Even if it's cracked up a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don't let me miss an open door.
"And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."
Palin's faith was scrutinized during the election campaign after an Internet video surfaced showing her being blessed by a Kenyan witch-hunter in a 2005 service at a Pentecostal church in Alaska.
In a separate interview with the Anchorage Daily News she blamed President George W. Bush's administration for the defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket in last week's election.
"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration?" Palin told the paper.
"So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could.
"It's amazing that we did as well as we did."
In Monday's wide-ranging interview with Fox News, Palin also appeared to admit for the first time allegations made by anonymous aides to running mate John McCain that she had "gone rogue" during the election campaign.
In the final weeks of the election, reports of tensions between Palin and McCain's advisers emerged, with unidentified sources alleging she had routinely disregarded their advice and made unscripted remarks.
"But being quite independent, just like John McCain is also, yes, maybe there is some characterizing of me going rogue when once in a while I would say something that -- hey, I said it from the heart," Palin said.
"I believed in going off script once in a while in some of the rallies in order to really reiterate, perhaps, something that I believed about John McCain."
"Maybe it wasn't written in the script, but so what? Geez, if this is all going to be so scripted and kind of like a movie screen and we have to follow verbatim everything that somebody writes for you, I don't want any part of that. That's not who I am and that's not who John McCain is either."
Palin denied however that any of her comments had hurt McCain's campaign.
Meanwhile Palin also dismissed reports following last week's election suggesting she was unaware Africa was a continent, not a country, insisting the question had never arisen during discussions about the region.
"We discussed what was going on in Africa. And never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or is it a continent," Palin said.
"I just don't know about this issue. So I don't know how they took our one discussion on Africa and turned that into what they turned it into."
And Palin denied she ever asked for her much-publicized 150,000-dollar wardrobe during the campaign, saying it was purchased for her by the Republican party and that many of the clothes for her and her family were never worn.
"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," said Palin, saying she "would have been happy to wear my own clothes."
Given the serious issues facing the country, "that turned into a kind of odd campaign issue," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment