In an appearance on the Fox News Channel on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin went to bat for two candidates who could foil the efforts of the Republican Party to unseat President Barack Obama in November — real estate mogul Donald Trump and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Palin told “Your World” fill-in host Eric Bolling on Monday that people shouldn’t be upset by a potential Trump third-party candidacy. (RELATED: Full coverage of Sarah Palin)
“I’m getting pretty sick and tired of people condemning and cutting down Donald Trump for calling it like he sees it and exercising his right as an American to express his views — even via talking about a third-party candidacy,” Palin said. “I couldn’t do that because I believe personally a third-party candidacy will allow greater assurance that Barack Obama would be re-elected, and that is the last thing on earth I want do see happen.”
Palin touted the credentials of Trump as a conservative and insisted he has the best of intentions.
“With Donald Trump — he has been a stalwart fiscal conservative in his ideas that he has supported, and that he has progressed as he flirted with the idea of running in the primary and until he switched to his voter registration to independent, he was a strong supporter of many of these Republican candidates and a lot of them turned on him, I think unfairly, unnecessarily in order to appease.”
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“I guess the more politically-correct people in their own campaigns and I thought that was unfortunate because Donald Trump has a lot to offer,” she said. “He is a businessman. He understands that government’s overreach just quashes the ability for him and others to create jobs for the rest of us who so desire to make it on our own and not to look to government to make it for us.”
The former Alaska governor suggested that if people were opposed to a Trump candidacy, they should “work even harder” for the candidate they think should be the next president.
“For those would have continued to cut down Donald Trump, I say, you know, enough is enough,” she said. “Just shut up about it and don’t vote for him if he is a third-party candidate. Work even harder for your candidate, and you know assuming the GOP will find out who it is, if not via Iowa tomorrow, then, through South Carolina, New Hampshire, before South Carolina, and, then, Florida after that.”
She added that the same goes for Paul, who has been said to be mulling a third-party run as well if his Republican nomination bid fails.
“With Ron Paul, too, as with Donald Trump — I respect they have that right to decide to perhaps mount a third-party candidacy,” she said. “Ron Paul has great things to offer, and, too, I am surprised that so many people forget he is the one who is ‘running with scissors,’ to paraphrase Daily Caller. Yes, Ron Paul understands we need to cut domestic spending not just reigning in that trajectory of the growth of government but to actually cut it so the private sector can grow and progress.”