Palin: We Should Have Talked More About Economy in 2008

Former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin recalled thumbing through a stack of note cards, mostly on foreign policy issues, in preparation for her 2008 debate against Joe Biden. An attached note from the McCain campaign instructed “Memorize these.”

Therein may have been one of the problems for the ill-fated campaign.

“It all had to do with for the most part (with) foreign policy issues which were not top of the ticket in terms of issues at the time,” recalled Palin, appearing on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” in advance of Thursday’s vice presidential debate between her former rival and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

“We should have talked more about the economy and how Barack Obama would lessen opportunities for economic recovery at the time,” Palin told host Bill O’Reilly.

“Instead, I was asked to memorize a whole lot of things about foreign policy that weren’t as relevant in the voters’ minds as the economy would.”

After looking at the note cards for a number of days, Palin tossed them aside “finally realizing how inconsistent and a bit convoluted some of the answers were,” she explained.

“You know at some point the candidate just has to kind of chuck those and decide ‘I will stand on my own record, my own philosophy, my own principles, making sure that they coincide with the top of the ticket’s views and we’ll go from there in the debate.’”

Characterizing her decision to throw away the note cards as going “rogue,” O’Reilly asked the former Alaska governor “did Biden try to shake you? Do you remember if he tried to intimidate you at all?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied, noting that Ryan can expect to be taken to task by Biden for some of his positions in Congress.

“But then again Joe Biden was in the Senate for decades and he’ll have to explain some of his past records too as a member of the legislative branch that have helped create some economic woes in our country, create an over burdensome and overbearing federal government in our lives,” she said. “So both characters, both individuals, will have to talk about policies and their past records.”