Sarah Palin hints at presidential run in 2012

Will she or won’t she?

On Sunday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) fueled speculation about a potential presidential bid when, after a rousing speech at the Tea Party convention Saturday night, Ms. Palin told Fox News Sunday that she hasn’t “closed the door” on a 2012 run.

“I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country,” she said, when asked whether she would consider running for president in 2012, adding, “I don't know if it's going to be seeking a title though.”

She would make a bid, she said, if she believed “that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. Certainly, I would do so.”

Also supporting the idea she's considering a presidential run: Palin now receives daily e-mail briefings on domestic and foreign policy from a group of Washington advisors.

In her 2008 campaign, she was widely derided for not being sufficiently knowledgeable on policy, especially foreign policy.

On Sunday, she told Fox News’s Chris Wallace she was more knowledgeable now on these issues. “My focus has been enlarged,” she said. “So, I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues than I was two years ago."

Following an energetic speech that had the audience at the National Tea Party Convention cheering, “Run, Sarah, run,” Palin’s Sunday interview had political analysts upping the chances that she would take on President Obama in 2012.

Her tea party speech was “so much of a campaign speech," wrote the Atlantic's political writer Marc Ambinder, "that I am revising upward my estimate of the chances she runs for president in 2012.”

Palin’s speech at the closing of the three day National Tea Party Convention was perhaps her most high-profile since her turn as vice presidential candidate at the Republican convention in 2008. She spent much of her speech Saturday bashing Mr. Obama and the Democrats on the economy, on healthcare reform, and for being soft on terrorism.

Whether she will use the populist tea party movement – a broad collection of largely libertarian activists – as a springboard for her next political move was unclear Saturday night. While the tea party activists enthusiastically embraced her as one of their own, she disavowed any ambition to be their leader, saying it should remain a grass-roots movement.

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