Palin blames Bush policies for GOP defeat

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-11 10:58

WASILLA, Alaska -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, amid speculation she'll run for president in four years, blamed Bush administration policies for the defeat last week of the GOP ticket and prayed she wouldn't miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, talks to media after she arrived at her office in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 for the first time since she began campaigning as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate. [Agencies]

"It's amazing that we did as well as we did," Palin, who was Sen. John McCain's running mate, said of the election in a separate interview with the Anchorage Daily News.

"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing," Palin said in a story published Sunday.

Palin has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

In a wide-ranging interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren, Palin says she neither wanted nor asked for the $150,000-plus wardrobe the Republican Party bankrolled, and thought the issue was an odd one at the end of the campaign, considering "what is going on in the world today."

"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," Palin said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from Day One. But that is kind of an odd issue, an odd campaign issue as things were wrapping up there as to who ordered what and who demanded what."

Palin has scheduled a series of national interviews this week with Fox, NBC's "Today" show and CNN. She also plans to attend the Republican Governors Association conference in Florida this week.