Palin wants God to show her way to White House

Palin wants God to show her way to White House



WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defeated Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Monday she hopes God will "show her the way" before she decides on any future bid for the White House.

The Alaska governor declined to say whether she was planning to run for the US presidency in four years, stating in an exclusive interview with the Fox News Channel that 2012 remained too far off.

"I can't predict what's going to happen a day from now, much less four years from now," Palin said, according to excerpts of the interview released by Fox News before its broadcast here at 10:00 pm (0300 GMT Tuesday).

However the devoutly religious 44-year-old mother-of-five said that if God wanted her to run for the highest office, she hoped to be shown the way.

"You know, I have -- faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator's hands -- this is what I always do," Palin said.

"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. Show me where the open door is," she added.

"Even if it's cracked up a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don't let me miss an open door.

"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."

Palin's faith was scrutinized during the election campaign after an Internet video surfaced showing her being blessed by a Kenyan witch-hunter in a 2005 service at a Pentecostal church in Alaska.

A second video surfaced showing Palin telling students at a church in Alaska that United States forces in Iraq had been sent on a "task that is from God."

In Monday's wide-ranging interview with Fox News, Palin also appeared to admit for the first time allegations made by anonymous aides to running mate John McCain that she had "gone rogue" during the election campaign.

In the final weeks of the election, reports of tensions between Palin and McCain's advisers emerged, with unidentified sources alleging she had routinely disregarded their advice and made unscripted remarks.

"But being quite independent, just like John McCain is also, yes, maybe there is some characterizing of me going rogue when once in a while I would say something that -- hey, I said it from the heart," Palin said.

"I believed in going off script once in a while in some of the rallies in order to really reiterate, perhaps, something that I believed about John McCain."

"Maybe it wasn't written in the script, but so what? Geez, if this is all going to be so scripted and kind of like a movie screen and we have to follow verbatim everything that somebody writes for you, I don't want any part of that. That's not who I am and that's not who John McCain is either."

Palin denied however that any of her comments had hurt McCain's campaign.

"If I went off script once in a while, I can't for the life of me remember any one time where it would have harmed him, or the ticket," she said.

Meanwhile Palin also dismissed reports following last week's election suggesting she was unaware Africa was a continent, not a country, insisting the question had never arisen during discussions about the region.

"We discussed what was going on in Africa. And never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or is it a continent," Palin said.

"I just don't know about this issue. So I don't know how they took our one discussion on Africa and turned that into what they turned it into."