Sarah Palin on Oprah: Not Focusing on 2012, Discusses Daughter’s Pregnancy

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 16, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Sarah Palin on Oprah: Not Focusing on 2012, Discusses Daughter’s Pregnancy

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 16
, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Sarah Palin’s much-ballyhooed appearance on Oprah finally took place on Monday. During her visit with the popular talk show host, Palin said she is not focusing on 2012 and she talked about the handling of her daughter’s pregnancy during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Although she did not rule out a potential presidential bid against pro-abortion President Barack Obama, Palin gave the typical answer that gets off the topic while leaving the door ajar.

Palin said a presidential run is “not on my radar screen right now.”

“I am dealing with so many issues that are important to me,” she said. “What I am seeing every day is that you don’t need a title to be important.”

Palin was criticized earlier this year for leaving her post as the governor of Alaska but she says she did so because she had no plans on running for re-election and wanted to not be limited as a "lame duck" governor.

The pro-life luminary, who recently drew thousands of supporters to a Wisconsin Right to Life event, said she wasn’t to blame for the defeat of presidential hopeful John McCain and she wouldn’t have been the reason he won either.

“I wasn’t to blame for losing the race, just like I wouldn’t have gotten credit for winning the race,” Palin said. The loss came because “our ticket represented what was perceived as the status quo.”

About her daughter Bristol, whose unplanned pregnancy took the nation by surprise shortly after she was chosen as McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, Palin said she was “surprised” that McCain’s team already knew about the pregnancy.

“I was surprised too that we didn’t handle the issue better,” she added.

As she relates in her new book, Palin accuses the campaign of creating an initial statement in response to the pregnancy and then running it even after she requested changes and drafted a second version.

“I read it,” she recalled, “and I said ‘no, no, no. Here’s our opportunity to tackle the problem of teen pregnancy in America.”

“I rewrote it, and a couple hours later I see that first statement scrolling across the [television] screen,” Palin said. “That was an indication of how things would go.”

“I thought it might be an issue,”she said of Bristol’s pregnancy. “But I also thought there was more realism about American life. I was naïve to think that the media would leave my kids along. I wasn’t given that privilege of being able to protect my kids, my family.”

The attacks on Palin were so vicious that the former president of Planned Parenthood went as far as crassly suggesting that Palin was forcing her daughter to keep her baby.

Bristol eventually gave birth to a son, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston.

Palin also said she didn’t expected to get asked so much about abortion during her controversial interview with Katie Couric.

She said Couric asked “12 different times on my position on abortion and the morning after pill.”

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