Sarah Palin: 'Not Doing This For Naught'

Oct. 29, 2008— -- Down in the polls but certainly not out, Gov. Sarah Palin remains in the fight as the campaign enters its final week.

In an interview with ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas, the Republican vice-presidential nominee was asked about 2012, whether she was discouraged by the daily attacks on the campaign trail, and would instead pack it in and return to her home state of Alaska.

"I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that would bring this whole … I'm not doing this for naught," Palin said.

Palin said she believed in the current GOP ticket and that she was "thinking that it's going to go our way on Tuesday, Nov. 4.  I truly believe that the wisdom of the people will be revealed on that day," she said.

Some sources within the campaign have suggested that Palin's series of public statements that differ from McCain and seem to come as a surprise to the campaign are evidence of her "going rogue."

The Alaska governor has said publicly that the campaign should have continued to fight in Michigan after McCain pulled out of the race there and she condemned the use of negative robocalls, even when McCain publicly approved of them.

Palin surprised the campaign last week when she said her medical records would be released, even though the campaign had not authorized them to be made public. Those records have yet to be made public.

When nominated in September at the Republican National Convention, Palin called herself a "pitbull" and quickly assumed the position of campaign attack dog, aggressively attacking Sen. Barack Obama's relationships and questioning his judgment.

Sarah Palin Says Obama Not Un-American

Those attacks have come under increased scrutiny, as Palin has routinely linked Obama with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and today linked Obama to Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and former PLO associate. Palin has also accused the Democrat of promoting socialism.

Vargas asked Palin if she continued to reference Obama's relationships in order to suggest he was "un-American," an historically loaded term.

Palin said she was not calling Obama "un-American," but was calling attention to his record.

"[I'm] not calling him un-American.  There is nothing wrong, though, with calling someone out on their record, their associations… The association issue here, it's not mean spirited. It's not negative campaigning. It's important and fair to the electorate."

In her interview with Vargas, Palin stepped back from comments she made Tuesday in Ohio in which she suggested that if elected, Obama would rewrite the Constitution to allow courts to confiscate private property.

"[I am] asking the question, what do his comments, from back there in 2001, candid comments that are caught on tape, what do they suggest in terms of his idea for future Supreme Court Justices, and perhaps for being able to reach some of the goals that it seems that he has in terms of redistributing other people's wealth… But not an explicit allegation like that," she said.

Palin was referring to a 2001 radio interview Obama gave regarding the Supreme Court when he said, "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it's been interpreted."