Palin mulls Senate bid

Sarah Palin is considering challenging Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (D) in 2014 for the state’s open Senate seat.

{mosads} Speaking Tuesday on Sean Hannity’s radio show, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate said it’s an option she’s “considered.”

“I’ve considered it because people have requested me considering it,” she said. “But I’m still waiting to see what the lineup will be and hoping that … there will be some new blood, new energy, not just kind of picking from the same old politicians in the state.”

Palin said she has a “heart for service” and would consider returning to politics if she could “help the cause.”


“I, along with anybody, would have to say that I would do whatever I could to help,” she said. “And if [running for Senate] was part of that help, then it would have to be considered.”

Last month, Palin drew attention for threatening to leave the Republican Party for the Freedom Party, saying Republican leadership had alienated some in the GOP by straying from conservative principles.

“I love the name of that party — the Freedom Party,” Palin said. “And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are going to start saying, ‘You know, what’s wrong with being independent?’ Kind of with that libertarian streak that much of us have.”

“I think there will be a lot of us who start saying ‘GOP, if you abandon us, we have nowhere else to go except to become more independent and not enlisted in a one or the other private majority parties that rule in our nation, either a Democrat or a Republican,’” she added. “Remember, these are private parties, and you know, no one forces us to be enlisted in either party.”

Palin tempered those remarks on Tuesday, saying leaving the party wouldn’t be her “first choice.”

“It’s certainly not my first choice,” she said. “The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln and Reagan, and the planks in the platform are right for this country. I stand strong on those planks. I just wish that more of our leadership, the movers and shakers within the party, would stand strong on those planks with the rest of us. … It tempts one to believe that if they in the party abandon us, we have no other choice.”