Sarah Palin damns all, but has a soft word for India

Former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Wednesday criticised American president Barack Obama’s big spending programmes, China’s muscle-flexing rise, and even her Republican party’s abandonment of fiscal conservatism.

But amidst all that, she had a soft word for India, noting that unlike China, which “lacks mechanisms to deal with regional issues,” India had the institutions to reconcile differences while simultaneously registering economic growth.

“Nobody worries about India and its growth,” Palin noted in a speech to delegates at the CLSA Investors’ Forum 2009 in Hong Kong, her first speech outside of the US and her first public appearance since she stepped down as Alaska governor.

Mediapersons were not allowed to attend Palin’s address, which some see as part of an effort to position herself for a possible presidential run in 2012; nor did the woman who was lampooned during the presidential election campaign (for claiming that her foreign policy credentials were strong because she could see Russia from her home-state of Alaska) take questions from the waiting media throng.

DNA, however, spoke to some delegates who attended the session to piece together her thoughts. In her speech, Palin additionally suggested that the US could help integrate India into Asia, which may be read as a signal that she favours a stronger US relationship with India, building on former president George W Bush’s efforts to induct India into the exclusive club of nuclear powers.

Palin blamed big government and the US Federal Reserve Board for the financial crisis, and praised the fiscal conservatism of former US president Ronald Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. “We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place,” she said. “We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom.”

Palin did not once refer to Obama by name, but criticised his big spending programmes, saying that “utopian sounding” campaign promises had not materialised. She blamed the financial crisis on the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate policy of previous years — which were implemented, ironically, during the Bush presidency.

And in comments that were out of synch with economists’ presentations at the conference (which have projected a bearish outlook on the US economy), Palin claimed that tax cuts and elimination of the capital gains and estate tax would allow the world to “watch the US economy roar back to life”.

Palin noted China’s repression of the rights of people in Tibet and Xinjiang, and said that China’s rise “justifiably makes a lot of people nervous”. America, she claimed, has a role in helping China find its future, and the US would “always be on the side of promoting freedom”.

She said that the US should have “the best possible relationship” with China, but noted that the Obama administration had accentuated an already difficult situation with its imposition of tariffs on Chinese tyres earlier this month.

Delegates’ responses to Palin’s speech varied across the spectrum, with some dismissing it as “right-wing claptrap”, and others characterising her as a “brilliant voice of America’s future”.