During the online-only web extra segment of ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could “rehabilitate herself” by winning a Senate seat in 2014.
Watch:
“I was for taking the gamble of putting her on the ticket — I don’t think it hurt the ticket in 2008,” Kristol said of Palin, a former GOP candidate for vice president. “I think the best two weeks for the McCain campaign against Obama in 2008 were the two weeks after he picked Sarah Palin. And then she had a little bit of a rough patch — she was mishandled, I think, by the McCain people.”
“I think her stepping down as governor of Alaska was a big problem,” he continued. “People don’t like to see a candidate, a governor, an executive — absent some medical reason or whatever — to just leave office early. She had been a good governor, incidentally, of Alaska until then. So, that, I think, is something she has to recover from in terms of being a serious leader in the party. Still has a lot of loyalty. She can still shape the debate. She still has a great political touch.”
Palin could make a comeback, Kristol argued, if she successfully challenges Alaska Sen. Mark Begich in 2014. The one-time tea party champion has indicated she may be interested in running fot the seat.
“I think the way Palin would possibly resurrect herself, if that’s the right word or rehabilitate herself, I guess is a better way of putting it — run for Senate in Alaska in 2014. I’m not urging that. I’m just saying, if I were her adviser, I would say, take on the incumbent, you have to win a primary, then you have to beat an incumbent Democrat, it’s not easy. But if she did that, suddenly, imagine that, Sarah Palin, freshman Senator in 2015 in Washington, having beaten an incumbent, that’d be pretty interesting.
(h/t RCP Video)