Sarah Palin's Thinking is 'Still 2010'

Dec. 11, 2009— -- Everyone should be unsuccessful so successfully: From a losing vice presidential candidacy, Sarah Palin has bounced back as a best-selling author with plans to be a major player in next year's elections.

"It has been spectacular," Palin told USA Today in a telephone interview Thursday as she wrapped up a three-week book tour that has made her memoirs, "Going Rogue", one of the top-selling non-fiction debuts ever.

Palin heads home this weekend for Christmas in Alaska, but she won't be there long.

But even as her book sales soar, Palin remains a divisive figure in American politics. In an October Gallup Poll, 50 percent of those surveyed viewed the conservative Republican unfavorably, compared to 40 percent who had a favorable view.

In the interview, Palin praised President Obama for the speech he gave Thursday to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. She said the president's defense of war to combat evil could have been taken from the pages of her memoirs.

"Wow, that really sounded familiar," said Palin, a frequent Obama critic. "I talked, too, in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times."

She did criticize the president for his efforts to make a deal on climate change at the global summit now underway in Copenhagen. Though she has seen "glaciers receding" and other "impacts of climate change" in the nation's only Arctic state, the former Alaska governor said "that doesn't mean that it's man's activities -- that it's drilling for oil or driving an SUV -- that has caused these cyclical weather pattern changes that for eons the Earth has witnessed."

Does she plan to take on Obama in 2012?

"My thinking is still 2010 and helping candidates get elected there," Palin said. "That's what I'm concentrating on."

If she isn't quite ready to run for the presidency, Palin also is doing nothing to discourage the idea. Her book tour has been a "confirming and affirming" experience, she said, adding that she's tapped the same vein of discontent in the country's body politic as the conservative "Tea Party" movement, which she called "beautiful."

"The great thing about what's going on right now across the country is there isn't the apathy that perhaps we had seen even a year ago," Palin said. "All these people who are getting riled up. It's a healthy riled up, too. This is good for democracy. It's people getting sick and tired of feeling disenfranchised and disenchanted with their government, and they want their voice heard."

The political action committee Palin formed this year, SarahPAC, won't file its next public accounting until January. Palin aide Jason Recher reports "a significant uptick" in fundraising since the book tour began Nov. 18.

In next year's congressional and gubernatorial races, Palin said she'll be helping to fund candidates who share her "economically conservative principles" and "commitment to win the war against terrorists." Ideology, she said, is more important than party labels.

Earlier this year, Palin made a much-publicized intervention in a New York congressional race, backing a Conservative Party candidate over the GOP nominee. A Democrat ended up winning the seat that had been held for more than a century by Republicans.

Things haven't been smooth for Palin in Alaska, either. Fellow Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, the state's senior senator, blasted Palin last summer when Palin abruptly resigned her position as Alaska's first female governor with 18 months left in her four-year term. Murkowski expressed disappointment that Palin "decided to abandon the state and her constituents."

Palin has no regrets. "God has blessed the decision I made," she said.