Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took a minute Wednesday to counter an earlier claim by Rick Santorum that she might be skipping the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week because she had more lucrative options on the table.
While she prefaced her comments with the disclaimer that earlier reports about the former Pennsylvania senator's statement may have been slightly overblown, as Santorum himself contended, that didn't stop Palin from getting in a jab. The former vice-presidential candidate said she wouldn't call Santorum "the knuckle-dragging neanderthal that perhaps others would want to call him, I'll let his wife call him that."
Palin also appeared to take issue with Santorum's suggestion that her parenting duties might have kept her from attending the conservative conference.
"Just because I'm a mom, that does not mean that I didn't want to be there," Palin said in an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity. "I'm the proud mother of five. My kids don't hold me back from attending a conference."
On Wednesday, Santorum called the story about his comments "garbage" that was making "something out of nothing." According to Politico, he made similar attempts to resolve to situation in an interview with Fox News's Greta Van Susteren later that evening.
"She has family obligations. It is halfway around the country. There's nothing more to it than that," Santorum said. "I know she has obligations to do other things outside of the work she does at Fox. I said I assume she has other things to do."
WATCH via Politico: