Will Sarah Palin Run in 2012 as an AIP Candidate?

- for The Hill on 7/21/09

by Bernie Quigley

Not long ago Mike Huckabee said that he hopes Sarah Palin is not thinking of “going independent” as she brought electricity to the Republican Party in her run with John McCain. It might be worth wondering if she is thinking of running in 2012 as a candidate for the Alaska Independence Party (AIP).

Palin has been on eight trips outside her Anchorage base since announcing her resignation.

"I am Alaskan. I've grown up here and I'm going to remain in Alaska," she said in an interview. "It's not farewell. It's more like, thanks for letting me be here and I'll see you soon."

She has not offered any specific plans for 2012 but she hints that she has a bigger role in mind, and she plans to launch her new platform by speaking her mind on the social networking site Twitter.

"Once I am 'Sarah Palin, Alaskan,' I can really call it like I see it," she said.

There have been calls here in northern New England for a regional political party to address issues of federal and state share of responsibility but there is today no viable third party movement in the region. The AIP is venerable in this league and Palin was associated with it vaguely as she offered them a greeting from the Governor’s office one year and her husband, Todd Palin, once belonged to the party.

The states sovereignty movements across the country now claim 36 initiatives. They started in February are a direct result of the federal bailouts and are likely to make progress as the deficit advances into the trillions. Palin made several elliptical references to the 10th amendment movement in her parting address several weeks back and she once addressed it directly.

When the winged monkeys took to the air over her resignation, it almost went unnoticed that in one of her last acts as Alaska’s chief Governor Palin signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, the Tenth Amendment Center reports. The resolution "claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."

Alaska's House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0 World Net Daily reports.

A recent Rasmussen Reports survey has Mitt Romney tied to Barack Obama and Palin only six points behind. When asked if she does not get the Republican nomination should Sarah Palin run as an Independent, 21 percent said Yes.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was the first to raise the cry against the Obama administration’s bailouts but since the Trickster has taking him out of play for the time being the leadership mantle on this issue could now pass to Palin as she was one of the first on board to support his efforts. And as estimates today for liability under the bailouts is up to $23.7 trillion - nearly $80,000 for every man, woman and child in the country – vastly more than even Sanford’s dire predictions last November, the Obama movement could very quickly begin to be seen as a sad but comic opera and a massive hoax of historic proportions. The Sanford/Palin position could be the antidote.