Republicans split over Palin's 2012 presidential run intentions

London, Oct 27 : US presidential election isn't over for another eight days and the next one is four years away, but the question being asked with some urgency is: Will Sarah Palin run for President in 2012?

Supporters see her as the leader to steer the conservative movement out of its malaise, a politician who can excite the party faithful in a mirror image of what Barack Obama did for the Democrats, the Guardian reported.

Should Obama win on November 4, and many conservatives are resigned to that, the chorus is likely to grow. But so too will the voices of opposition, with their own Palin chant: "Get back to Alaska!"

Here too the rumblings are audible. Over the weekend, advisers to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, were briefing more than one news outlet that Palin was "going rogue", pursuing her own political interests with an eye on 2012 rather than concentrating on McCain's stab at the top job.

"She is a diva," one unnamed adviser told CNN. "She is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party."

The Politico website carried the views of other anonymous McCain aides who attacked Palin for being "green", sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticise McCain for his campaign strategy.

Palin has recently broken with the McCain campaign on several points. She has publicly chided the decision to abandon the race in Michigan and questioned why Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has been treated as out of bounds.

Such outspokenness is just one way in which Palin has divided opinion across the country.

She has emerged as a singularly charismatic but also divisive politician, splitting the electorate into those who see her as the epitome of small-town America or small-minded America.

That division cuts deep within the conservative movement and reflects a basic disagreement over the future direction of the Republican Party. In the soul-searching that would follow a McCain defeat much of the debate may centre on the personality of Palin.

Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, is an admirer of Palin who thinks she will stand for president in 2012.

ANI