Is she running for president? Seeking a coffee summit with Hillary Clinton? Or just selling her book?

The only clear answer about Sarah Palin’s intentions is that the questions are drawing lots and lots of U.S. media attention. 
  
This week, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor is on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She’s also going on-air for separate interviews with TV’s Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters of ABC News.
    
It’s all about promoting her new memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” which goes on sale Tuesday. But the notion that she also might be testing the waters for a 2012 presidential run is what’s drawing the serious attention.
    
Supporters liken her to a populist 21st century Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. But not all the coverage is as she’d like it.
    
Newsweek, which pictures her on its cover as an attractive young woman in running shorts, scoffs at the idea of a Palin 2012 presidential campaign.
    
“Her brand of take-no-prisoners partisanship is not good for the Republicans in the long run and not good for the country,” Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told MSNBC.
    
“When you have a kind of ‘death panel’ ideology, where you make pronouncements that are factually untenable and tend to inflame the conversation … that’s not good for governance.”
 
She got a warmer reception from another woman of the campaign trail, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom Palin thinks she might like to meet over coffee.
 
“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee. I’ve never met her. And I think it would be, you know, very interesting to sit down and talk with her,” Clinton, now U.S. secretary of state, said over the weekend.
    
But the last word is likely to be Palin’s. Her book promotion is expected to draw huge crowds across the country. And while a Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 60 percent of Americans don’t think she’s qualified to be president, a similar percentage of Republicans say she is.
  

Photo Credits: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin); Reuters/Jason Reed (White House); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is open to having coffee with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose new book about the 2008 presidential campaign is stirring controversy.

“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee,” Clinton said from Singapore  Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Clinton told ABC’s “This Week” that she would look forward to having a chance to actually get to meet Palin.

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, gives a nod to Clinton in her book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” Clinton lost the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama.

Palin, a popular conservative firebrand who has been communicating mostly via Facebook since quitting as governor, opens a campaign-style book tour on Tuesday that will hit a dozen states.

Is she laying the groundwork for a 2012 presidential campaign, or simply selling her book, which currently sits atop the Amazon.com Top 100 Books list?

For the moment, all that she is saying (on Facebook early Sunday) is that she’s looking forward to the tour. “I’m most looking forward to meeting many of you, shaking your hands, and telling you, ‘Thanks for loving America,’” Palin says.

You’ve seen the Sarah Palin book excerpts in which she complains about being “bottled up” by Republican John McCain’s campaign last year.

Long-time McCain adviser Mark Salter explains here the thinking behind the McCain campaign’s media strategy that Palin seems to be complaining about in an excerpt of her book published by the Drudgereport today.

“After we had been criticized in the press for a lack of disciplined messaging earlier in the campaign when we provided frequent and unscheduled access to the candidate, we felt it necessary to adopt the same deliberativeness and discipline employed by our opponents and rely less on impromptu press conferences with our traveling press, and more on interviews arranged in advance so our candidates would have the same opportunity our opponents enjoyed to discuss and prepare for the interview.

“Approximately one week elapsed from Governor Palin’s nomination to her first major press interview, the first in a series of major interviews Governor Palin did. Those interviews were discussed and agreed to by senior members of the campaign staff in consultation with the candidates. Nicolle Wallace, along with others, was tasked with helping the Governor prepare for some of her interviews. She did not decide which interview requests the candidates would accept. Nor was she tasked with securing the candidates’ agreement. Those decisions were made by campaign management in consultation with the candidates. Campaign management and the candidates agreed to multi segment interviews so the Governor would maintain a presence in the media while she was in debate prep. And to the best of my knowledge, any interviews the Governor had with the individuals she referred to were approved and arranged by the campaign management with her agreement.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin at her farewell speech in July)

Sarah Palin says on her Facebook page that the healthcare overhaul passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week should be “Dead on Arrival” in the U.S. Senate. 

The House-passed bill, which includes a new government health insurance plan, may not be what the Senate passes. But the far-reaching healthcare reform backed by President Barack Obama is far from dead. At least one influential Republican senator believes Congress will enact sweeping legislation.

“I think a bill is going to pass,” said New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg. In an interview with C-Span’s “Newsmakers” that will air on Sunday, Gregg said Obama has invested too much political capital in his top domestic priority to allow it to fail. Gregg once considered joining the Obama administration, but now has become a major critic of Obama’s proposed healthcare reform and its impact on the country’s mounting debt.

“We’re on an unsustainable path, it is that simple,” Gregg said.

Gregg said he does not see Democrats scaling back the legislation in the face of eye-popping, record deficits.  On the contrary, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struggling to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill in the 100-member Senate, Gregg sees “more baggage” being added to it in an effort to win votes.

The bill that initially passes the Senate is not likely to include a new government-run health insurance program, Gregg said. But he said the legislation will likely “move to the left” once Senate and the House negotiators meet to work out their differences and develop a single bill. He said he expects the final bill to include some version of a new public insurance option.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Senator Judd Gregg in his office)

Apparently all is forgiven.

Sarah Palin tells Oprah Winfrey she wants to welcome Levi Johnston back into the fold.

Her daughter’s ex-fiance and father of her grandchild has been all over TV shows and in print media making unflattering comments about Palin, but the former Alaska governor says he’s part of the family.

Palin, who ran for vice president on the Republican ticket with Senator John McCain last year, also had nice things to say about Oprah, who had supported the other party’s candidate — Barack Obama.

The interview with Oprah Winfrey will air Monday to kick off a book tour for Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American LIfe.”

Last year, Palin was skewered for fumbling a question about what she read, and she tells Oprah she knew that interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric had gone badly.

“The campaign said ‘Right on, good. You’re showing your independence. This is what America needs to see’ and, of course,  I’m thinking ‘if you thought that was a good interview, I don’t know what a bad interview was.’ So I  knew it wasn’t a good interview,” Palin says in a clip of the taped Oprah interview released Thursday.

She also talks about what went on inside the McCain campaign and entertains questions about her family, Oprah said on her Web site.

Winfrey asked whether Johnston would be at the Palins’ Thanksgiving Dinner table.

“He is a part of the family and we want to bring him into the fold and kind of under your wing, and he needs that too, Oprah. ”

“I think he needs to know that he is loved and he has the most beautiful child and this can all work out for good. It really can. We don’t have to keep going down this road of controversy and drama all the time,” Palin responded.

You can see more on Monday. Much more, says Palin. She wrote on her Facebook page that the taping went way over on time and the rest will air on Oprah.com. But anyone looking for drama or tension may go away disappointed. Palin says she and Oprah got along just fine.

“Oprah was very hospitable and gracious, and her audience was full of warm, energized and (no doubt) curious viewers,” Palin said.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Steve Marcus (Palin at a rally in Nevada October 2008)

The Vietnam War caused the biggest political division in the United States since the Civil War. It also radicalized a generation and drove a president from office. Yet Democrats are using a photograph of two of the Vietnam War’s leading characters to try to rally the party and raise money.

The fund-raising outfit that helps elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate has opened the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Online Store “just in time for the holidays.”

Yes, there are the typical campaign buttons you’d expect. But besides being the first in your neighborhood with a fashionable DSCC mug, this year’s holidays also can be celebrated with a framed photo of President Lyndon Johnson, conferring with his secretary of defense. That would be Robert Strange McNamara, an architect of the American troop escalation in Vietnam.

“Every purchase helps get Democrats elected,” the DSCC says.

Nineteen Democratic-held seats are up for grabs in elections next year,  out of 38 races, and Democrats will have to fight hard not to lose seats in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Republicans shouldn’t feel left out in the cold on gift-giving. There are plenty of websites offering  up ideas that showcase their stars.

For those who really want to get into the holiday spirit, the Sarah Palin wine glass or “can cooler” might be right up their alley.

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Photo credit: Reuters from Defense Department handout (McNamara)

Get ready, America. Like her or not, Sarah Palin is coming to a city near you.

Last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee is starting a book tour next week to promote her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Is it a thinly-veiled bid to test the waters for a possible 2012 Republican presidential bid, or simply an effort to make money and cement her celebrity status?

Only time will tell.

For now, the opening stops of her tour in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Florida, could be valuable if she later decides to run.

So far she is steering clear of major cities, going to smaller places like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of one of the biggest military bases in the country.

“I’ve decided to stop in cities that are not usually included in a typical book tour,”  Palin said this week on her Facebook page.

For the whole story click here.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Blake (Palin when Republican vice presidential nominee in November 2008)

The House passage of healthcare legislation means different things to different folks.

For President Barack Obama it was a “courageous vote” by members of Congress.

Obama went to Capitol Hill Saturday to personally press for passage. Today he was full of praise.

“Given the heated and often misleading rhetoric surrounding this legislation, I know that this was a courageous vote for many members of Congress,” Obama said in the Rose Garden.

For Sarah Palin the healthcare bill was a mess.

“We’ve got to hold on to hope, and we’ve got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country,” Palin said on her Facebook page.

“This out-of-control bureaucratic mess will be disastrous for our economy, our small businesses, and our personal liberty,” she says.

For Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao, the only Republican to vote for the House bill, it was “the right decision for my district, even though it was not the popular decision for my party.”

Watch CNN’s interview of the first-term congressman from Louisiana below:

Who do you agree with?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Obama on way to making statement on healthcare)

Look out Washington, Sarah Palin is coming.

Palin will be the Republican speaker at the annual winter dinner of the Gridiron Club of journalists in Washington on Dec. 5.

“The governor is very excited and was honored to accept the invitation,” said her spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton.

The former Alaska governor, who rose to fame as John McCain’s vice presidential nominee last year, is about to go on a book tour to promote her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin talks to well-wishers in Fairbanks in July)

Day-after chatter focused on how independent voters were pivotal in helping drive Republicans to victory in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races.

“The independent voter today is the keystone,” a very happy chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, said on CNN.

“And if you don’t have a message for them, if you don’t have something to say, they’ll let you know by going with the other team or staying out of it altogether. Last night they came home to the GOP,” he said. After repeated TV appearances since last night’s results, Steele is holding a press conference at 10 a.m.

Tim Kaine, the outgoing governor of Virginia and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made the TV rounds on behalf of his party — his main message was that Creigh Deeds, the Democrat who lost  the race to replace him in the Virginia statehouse, had been an “underdog” all along.

Kaine also focused on (surprise, surprise) the Democrat win for a House of Representatives seat in New York over the Conservative Party candidate that Sarah Palin had endorsed.

Palin had something to say about that on her Facebook page in a note titled “A Victory for Common Sense and Fiscal Sanity.”

“I commend Doug Hoffman and all the other under-dog candidates who have the courage to put themselves out there and run against the odds,” the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

(Notice both Kaine and Palin describe their losing candidates as underdogs).

Palin, whose book “Going Rogue” is due out mid-month, ended her note by saying: “The cause goes on.”

President Barack Obama is off to Wisconsin today, a year after he won the presidential election. We’ll be on the lookout for any comment on this week’s election outcome.

What impact do you think the Republican wins in New Jersey and Virginia will have going forward?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson (Leo who plays title role in film “Underdog” held by actor Jason Lee)