Palin comment sparks 2012 talks

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By Jon Ward

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Wednesday said her current time in the national spotlight is "not for naught," in what some took to be an admission of aspirations for a future White House run of her own, but which the McCain campaign said was nothing of the sort.

The McCain campaign said Mrs. Palin was not talking about future political calculations, and that she was simply responding to a portion of the question which asked whether she had been "bruised" by criticism.

The first question from an ABC reporter, however, was what she would do if her ticket lost Tuesday, and whether she was thinking about a run for president in 2012.

"I'm just ... thinking that it's gonna go our way on Tuesday, November 4," Mrs. Palin said.

The reporter responded, "But the point being that you haven't been so bruised by some of the double standard, the sexism on the campaign trail, to say, 'I've had it. I'm going back to Alaska.'"

"Absolutely not," Mrs. Palin said, according to an ABC transcript. "I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that would ... bring this whole ... I'm not doin' this for naught."

Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said that the governor was "talking about not giving up in this race in the face of ridicule on the trail."

But the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail to reporters highlighting an early ABC version of their story which was headlined, "Sarah Palin vows to remain player in 2012."

The McCain campaign called this headline "misleading," and within about an hour the headline had been changed to a more safe, "Sarah Palin: 'Not Doing This for Naught.'"

But the comments fueled speculation that has been building over the past week that Mrs. Palin has gone "rogue" and is looking past the current election to her own political future.

Mrs. Palin has been accused in the press recently - by anonymous McCain campaign staffers - of departing from the script set for her by the McCain campaign. One McCain campaign official called her a "diva." Another went even further and called her a "wack job."

A confidant of the governor, however, told CNN that Mrs. Palin was trying to "bust free" from constraints put on her by McCain handlers. She is reportedly resentful of the way she has been portrayed in the press as ignorant of major policy issues, and of how she was initially held back from doing interviews by the McCain campaign.

In the last month Mrs. Palin has labeled robocalls from her own campaign "irritating" and said she disagreed with Mr. McCain's decision to pull campaign resources out of Michigan.

She also told Christian conservative leader James Dobson that Mr. McCain would implement the Republican Party platform on issues such as abortion, stem cell research, and same-sex marriage, which in some cases is more conservative than Mr. McCain's own positions.

In a speech Wednesday, Mrs. Palin said a McCain administration would make a "clean break" from the Bush administration's energy policies, but that comment was included in her prepared remarks, which likely would have been vetted by the campaign headquarters.