Palin Mocks Obama to ‘Tea Party’ as She Weighs White House Run

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Sarah Palin stormed back onto the national political stage, mocking President Barack Obama at a convention of “Tea Party” activists and saying she would consider running for the White House.

“It would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country,” she said in an interview on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “I won’t close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.”

Palin sought to establish herself as a politician qualified for America’s top office during weekend appearances at the National Tea Party Convention, in the Fox interview and on the campaign trail in Texas with a Republican gubernatorial candidate. Some Republicans said Palin might be motivated by something other than political ambition.

“What she is doing, frankly, I think, is trying to make some money,” said John Feehery, who advised former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Palin, 45, gained national exposure 17 months ago after Senator John McCain picked her as his presidential campaign running mate. She depicted herself as a Washington outsider and “hockey mom.” After losing the 2008 election, she received a $1.25 million advance, according to the Associated Press, to write her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Top McCain campaign officials criticized her, accusing her of inaccuracies and a lack of depth, charges she has disputed. Daily e-mail briefings on policy from Washington advisers are helping her become more knowledgeable than in 2008, she said.

“My focus has been enlarged,” Palin said on Fox, where she is a paid contributor. “So, I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues.”

War Card

Obama could win a second term, Palin predicted, if he “played the war card” on Iran or took other, more aggressive military action. “People would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he’s tougher than we think.”

“What Sarah Palin is saying on national security matters is specious, irresponsible and hypocritical,” Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “Sarah Palin admitted in 2008 that the extent of her national security experience was that she could see Russia from some island in the Bering Sea.”

Palin told Fox she has discovered a “new normal” in her life that includes being “under a microscope.” She has been employed as a contributor at Fox, owned by New York-based News Corp., since January.

The interview’s broadcast came after Palin criticized Obama’s first year in office by saying “the list of broken promises is long” during a Feb. 6 speech at the Tea Party movement’s inaugural national convention.

‘Hope-y, Change-y’

“How’s that hope-y, change-y stuff working out for you?” she asked, mocking Obama’s campaign themes.

Her campaign-style speech at a dinner in Nashville, Tennessee, was an attack on the administration’s handling of national security and terrorism, even though she stopped short of declaring ambitions for a 2012 presidential bid as her audience chanted “Run Sarah, Run!”

“America is ready for another revolution,” she said.

Palin questioned whether the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit was interrogated aggressively enough.

“Treating this like a mere law-enforcement matter places our country at grave risk because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this,” she said. “To win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”

Tea Party Hero

A heroine of the leaderless Tea Party movement, Palin told the audience in the U.S. country-music capital that she planned to endorse 2010 candidates and that the Republican Party should not be “afraid of contested primaries” within its ranks.

Her appearance was the first of several Tea Party events Palin plans to attend. She is also scheduled to appear in March at a rally in Searchlight, Nevada, the hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat who is in a tight re- election race, and in Boston in April to mark the movement’s one-year anniversary.

Palin also campaigned yesterday for Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican facing a primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

The convention at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel was the first national meeting of a movement that emerged last year amid protests over the policies of Obama and the Democrats who control Congress.

National Base

Tea Party activists, drawn to Palin’s anti-Washington rhetoric and working-mother personality, would form a natural base for her, should she decide to make a White House bid.

“The more she can talk to them and talk to conservative evangelicals, the more she can have a passionate following and appeal to a fairly large swath of GOP voters and independent voters,” said Feehery, the Republican strategist.

“She has attained rock-star status,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean she has a great voice, but she has attained celebrity.”

Palin was paid $100,000 for her Tea Party speech, according to the AP. She told her audience she would give her compensation “to the cause.”

To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Nashville at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net.