'Top Line' -- Can Palin ‘Prove She Knows Her Stuff'?

November 16, 2009 2:30 PM

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

While some in the GOP establishment are hardly thrilled with another Sarah Palin-filled week, the intense media focus on Palin gives her a chance to "rehabilitate herself," conservative blogger Erick Erickson said today on ABCNews.com's "Top Line."

Erickson, the founder and editor of the influential blog RedState.com, said Palin has an opportunity in all the focus on her, starting with the interview that aired today with Oprah Winfrey.

"I think this is about Sarah Palin, not the party or the movement," Erickson told us. "I do think though if she cannot rehabilitate herself, if she is seen or tries to be more and more of a voice for the party, it could hurt [Republicans], unless she changes. I suspect though that particularly having this moment on Oprah today, she's going to be able to start turning the corner, image-wise and PR-wise."
 
It's going to take more than a round of interviews and a bus tour, he said.

"It's not just a book tour. I think she's going to have to come out on her book tour though and prove that she does have the stuff. One of the chief criticisms among conservatives of Palin during 2008 was that she hadn't done the reading," said Erickson, who said he has an interview scheduled with Palin for tomorrow. "So if she proves that she knows her stuff, she's got the foundation, then I don't think she's going to have a problem."

We also chatted with Erickson about the work his blog and others have done in promoting conservative challengers to Republican office-seekers, both in New York's 23rd congressional district and in -- among other 2010 races -- the Senate campaign in Florida.

Watch the full interview with Erick Erickson, via Skype from Macon, Ga., HERE.

Also in today's show, we spoke with Jay Newton-Small of Time magazine, who traveled to Alaska to interview Palin shortly after she announced her intention to resign.

Newton-Small said the way she's promoting her book suggests that Palin is interested in another run for office:

"It's clearly a campaign move in many ways," she said. "I mean, she's riding around the country on a bus, you know, with her image painted on it. … The states that she's hitting, she's going to Iowa -- that's no coincidence.  You know, they're almost all swing states that she's going through so certainly it's the first step and I think that she's trying to find a path to a nomination. And I don't know that she knows that it's there yet, but she's certainly exploring it. And you know, she's definitely the one superstar that the Republican Party has right now."

Watch the discussion with Jay Newton-Small, with more on Palin plus the Senate's push for a health care bill, HERE.

And check out President Obama's comments on Twitter -- an admission that, in this case at least, could place Sen. John McCain technologically ahead of his onetime rival.