Sarah Palin tells
Newsmax TV she wants to see the huge crop of GOP presidential candidates pared down to two dynamos: billionaire developer Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
In an exclusive interview with "Newsmax Prime," the former Alaska governor and 2008 running mate of John McCain told J.D. Hayworth:
"Wouldn't that be a great problem to have a Trump vs. Cruz battle, if you will? We would be very fortunate to face such a thing.
"Because both are fighters for America and certainly are much more independent than a few of the candidates in there that I would consider more part of the establishment, the status quo going along to get along. Ugh, we don't need any more of that. That got us into this mess.
"That'd be a good problem to have. We'll see in the next month, two months as finally some of the voting begins how things start shaking out because you know of course better than I even that a month or two months in politics that is a lifetime."
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Trump powered past his GOP presidential primary rivals to a commanding 41 percent lead, followed by Cruz a distant second with 14 percent, according to a
Monmouth University poll released Monday.
One candidate Palin is highly doubtful she’d support is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, considered by many conservatives to be too liberal.
"Not if he's not 100 percent for the Second Amendment and understands our God-given right to protect ourselves and the innocent ones around us. No, I couldn't support that," she said.
"Remember that embrace of President Obama that we saw from Gov. Christie [during a tour of the devastation of superstorm Sandy]. That was kind of symbolic.
"A lot of people interpreted that as… sort of an embracing of growing government in some arenas. We certainly know that like [President Ronald] Reagan used to say 'government's not the answer, it is the problem.'"
Palin said she admires retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson for his willingness to jump into the presidential race with absolutely no political experience.
"I so admire him and his intelligence. I love even his innocence, if you will, and I say that with all due respect. He's not jaded and tainted," she said.
"[The] political process … man, it's brutal, isn't it? I mean it can just wear you down and yet he still seems to be able to take another step forward.
"It is tough jumping up there on a national stage when you haven't been there before to really dig into the idiosyncrasies of some of the issues and the details of some of our, especially, foreign policy issues. It's a long, hard road in front of him but I just have all of the respect in the world for Dr. Carson."
Palin called Carson the "antithesis" of former secretary of state and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton because of his "integrity, ethics, honesty, candidness, and trustworthiness."
"[It's] Dr. Carson vs. that political establishment that has been part of creating these problems and then blaming other people, never being held accountable and still trying to buffalo voters into choosing them, pretending they're going to do anything different than they've already done to get us into the mess," she said.
"If Americans do their homework, if voters look into what it is Hillary Clinton as secretary of state supported in the context of everything Barack Obama has been a part of in growing government and creating this less secure, less sovereign nation of ours, fundamentally transforming it, Hillary Clinton was by his side. She was shining his boots."
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