In Alaska today, Sarah Palin indulged reporters on the subject of her future political should McCain lose the election.
Here’s what she said:

“You know, if there is a role in national politics, it won’t be so much partisan,” she said. “My efforts have always been here in the state of Alaska to get everybody to unite and work together and progress this state.”
“It would certainly be a uniter type of role,” she added.
Asked if she had any regrets about the campaign, Palin bemoaned “the state of journalism today.”
“The blogosphere, the two-, three-hour news cycles, where just too much is reported based on gossip and innuendo and things taken out of context,” she explained, adding that she’d like to help improve the profession because she has “great respect for the world of journalism.”

GOM thinks that’s pretty telling. Though Palin was a hit among the GOP’s religious base and bombed among pretty much everyone else–illustrating the nation’s enduring culture war divisions–she’s vowing to become a uniter. Is this Palin looking to broaden her support base for 2012 in light of her narrow appeal in this election cycle? Or does she actually have a point–that she’d always been a uniter in Alaska (were she had a track record of working with Democrats and declined to make hot button social issues a key part of her governership) and has been unfairly portrayed as a divisive figure, as the Christian Right’s poster girl, by the national news media?
Has Palin, been socially conservative, Post-Christian RIght, Huckabeesque figure all along? It’s an important question, since her image as the opposite sort of figure, as an old line culture warrior, may have sunk the Republican ticket. At the same time, it’s worth remembering that Mike Huckabee–the Baptist preacher that even a secular liberal could love–failed to get traction outside of the GOP’s evangelical base.
Should McCain lose, Palin and Huckabee may be slugging it out to become the next great hope of the Christian Right. But do either of them have a political future on the national stage beyond that? The overwhelming evidence so far suggests not.

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