Posted on 12/09/2010 3:11:52 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Sarah Palin is planning her first real foreign trip—a move that could burnish her foreign policy credentials in advance of a 2012 presidential run.
The Daily Beast has learned that Sarah Palin will be traveling overseas in the new year. At the top of the list: Israel and England, both countries she has said she wanted to travel to in the past. The schedule and itinerary is still fluid, but an overseas trip in 2011 will boost her foreign policy credentials, something she can turn to in a potential 2012 presidential run.
Up to now Palin’s travel outside of North America includes visiting troops in Germany and Kuwait while she was governor and last year she gave a speech on the economy in Hong Kong. During the 2008 campaign, there was some confusion about whether she had also visited Iraq when traveling to see soldiers in Kuwait, but that turned out to be a visit to the border. McCain staffers at the time also said she had visited Ireland, but that was a re-fueling stopover.
Palin has long wanted to visit Israel, and in a recent Facebook post wishing the Jewish community a Happy Hanukkah she reconfirmed her support for the Jewish state: “Today we should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that the miracle of a Jewish state endures forever. The dreidel is one of the most familiar symbols of Hanukkah, with Hebrew letters on it representing the phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham—‘a great miracle happened there.’ Indeed a great miracle is still happening there.”
Last June, Palin announced on her Facebook page that she had been invited to visit London and have a meeting with one of her “political heroines,” Margaret Thatcher. She also wished the “Iron Lady,” who suffers from dementia, a happy birthday in October.
The former Alaska governor was criticized in 2008 for her limited global travel, but this first foreign trip post-governorship would burnish her foreign-policy credentials and would certainly be accompanied by a media frenzy as both the Israeli and English press follow her closely.
Palin has a foreign-policy team of two allies from her time on the McCain campaign, Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb briefing her, and she has taken to her Facebook page of late to weigh in on global issues. In a post titled “An Open Letter to Republican Freshmen Members of Congress” she tells new members to “say no to cutting the necessities in our defense budget when we are engaged in two wars and face so many threats—from Islamic extremists to a nuclear Iran to a rising China.” She also urges the freshmen to “push job-creating free trade agreements with allies like Colombia and South Korea.” And she even counsels them on Israel writing, “You can stand with allies like Israel, not criticize them. You can let the President know what you believe—Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement.” And she shares her opposition to the START treaty, something her potential 2012 rival Mitt Romney has also expressed his opposition toward, “don’t listen to desperate politically motivated arguments about the need for hasty consideration of the ‘New START’ treaty. Insist on your right to patient and careful deliberation of New START to address very real concerns about verification, missile defense, and modernization of our nuclear infrastructure. No New START in the lame duck!”
Another potential 2012 rival, Mike Huckabee has also announced a trip to Israel in the new year. He will be making his 15th trip to the Holy Land in January.
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Shushannah Walshe covers politics for The Daily Beast. She is the co-author of Sarah From Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar. She was a reporter and producer at the Fox News Channel from August 2001 until the end of the 2008 presidential campaign.
All true, but best to take away the easiest attack on her for it.
Me too! Me too! LOL!
Based on the choices made in the past by some of my Jewish friends, the voting choice of Americans of Jewish descent, is, indeed, a $64 question. As far as I know, I am not Jewish and not very policitically astute, but their warped views are impossible for me to understand!
Even better! Traveling to Haiti *this* weekend with Franklin Graham and his relief organization Samaritan’s Purse!
Thanks very much, aphid!
Har, fer sure!
She will most likely be concentrating on learning “Austrian!”
Does she ever take a bad photo?
One thing is certain — Gov Palin will change the way we look at foreign policy once and for all...
Just wondering if obama had traveled extensively overseas before becoming president...
I think he went to Pakistan at least once.
“She also wished the “Iron Lady,” who suffers from dementia, a happy birthday in October.”
I wouldn’t know Shushannah Walshe from Queen Jezebel, but the fact that she felt the need to include that snotty remark: “...who suffers from dementia”... in the article, creates in my beady little mind the impression that she’s some kind of smarta$$!
Doc, well let's see . . .he was born in Kenya, grew up in Indonesia, he's been to Pakistan. Yup. He has been a world traveler. /s
Hehe, she knows where to hit them, lol. Just when her enemies are thinking that she might quietly fade away, get a talk show, or become the NRC chairwoman, she shows them that she has bigger plans.
Oh wow, that’s icing on the cake, lol.
American Jews do not vote for what is good for Israel.
I think her use of refudiate was just nucular strategery.
Sarah Palin understands that she cannot live her life worrying about what her enemies will say or do in reaction to her. At this late date, the left and their media water-carriers are 100% against her to the point of derangement. Some on the right are unenthusiastic about Palin and are hoping for some nice RINO to come along and be anointed by the MSM and the GOP hierarchy as 'their' candidate. Meanwhile, conservatives are excited and even inspired by Sarah Palin, a true conservative that walks the walk and isn't trying to appease her political enemies by planning her trips - or anything else - on the basis of whether they can use it to attack her.
Her trip to Haiti (not Israel and England, as first reported) is clearly a humanitarian venture but her political enemies will sneer at it and try to portray it as something shoddy and fake. This is the leftist template. They can't win a political argument on the merits of statism so they attack the character of whomever represents the biggest threat to their power. Today, that is Sarah Palin, an authentic American patriot. Palin isn't perfect but she's not the illiterate demon the left tries so hard to portray whenever her name is mentioned. We all know that, even those on the right that might prefer someone else as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Sarah Palin is way smarter than her political enemies and she isn't about to circumscribe her life to please the left.
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