Palin finds fault in past as she eyes future prospects

GOVERNOR Sarah Palin has blamed Bush Administration policies for the defeat last week of the Republican presidential ticket.

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

The Alaskan Governor said she prayed she would not miss "an open door" for her next political opportunity.

"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," she said in an interview with Fox News yesterday.

"And if there is an open door in 2012 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 plough through that door."

Mrs Palin has scheduled a series of national interviews this week with Fox, NBC television's Today show and CNN. She has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. She could also seek re-election in 2010 or challenge for a Senate seat.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fox, she said she neither wanted nor asked for the $US150,000-plus ($A225,000) wardrobe the Republican Party bankrolled, and thought the issue was an odd one considering "what is going on in the world today".

"I did not order the clothes, did not ask for the clothes," the Republican vice-presidential candidate said. "I would have been happy to have worn my own clothes from day one."

She told the Anchorage 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 $US10 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."

The McCain-Palin campaign faced a storm of criticism over the tens of thousands of dollars spent at high-end stores to dress the nominee. Republican National Committee lawyers are still trying to determine what clothing was bought for Mrs Palin, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

Her father, Chuck Heath, said Mrs Palin spent part of the weekend going through her clothing to determine what belongs to the Republican Party.

In Wasilla, her home-town backers welcomed their former mayor. Bags of fan mail, as many as 400 letters a day, partially fill a room at her parents' house.

And in a bit of familiarity, Mr Heath said he took a pot of moose chilli to his daughter's house at the weekend.

AP