Author Joe McGinniss spoke recently about the ambitions of his former neighbor, Sarah Palin, and the future of the state that she used to govern, seemingly hinting that he believed Alaska's former governor might be seeking higher office and that the state was headed for some drastic changes.
During an interview with Alaska blog Mudflats, McGinniss, who recently vacated the Wasilla, Alaska, house next to Sarah Palin's estate, explained his vision of Frontier State:
McGinniss: Well, the way things are going right now [Alaska is] going to no longer be a state.
Mudflats: (laughs) The independent nation of Alaska?
McGinniss: The Independent Republic of Alaska - and we can have Joe Miller as King and Sarah Palin as Queen... although she wouldn't settle for being Queen of Alaska. She didn't even like being Governor. She has higher ambitions, obviously.
Speculation about a potential Palin presidential run has intensified in the past week, especially with news of a high profile, but poorly attended, 9/11 rally with Glenn Beck in Alaska.
At the event, Palin and Beck spoke little about the tragedy that struck nine years earlier, but were happy to goad the media on their predictions -- or perhaps desires -- that the two had selected the venue to throw their hats in the 2012 presidential ring.
"I'd like to announce that in 2012, we will both be ... voting," Beck said at the rally.
Palin was slightly less mocking, but certainly left the door open on 2012.
"If there is going to be some big national announcement I'm going to do it where it's most worthy. I'm going to do something big, even bigger then Glenn Beck. It's going to happen on the Bob and Mark show," Palin said, speaking of a radio duo that the Mudflats reports "were ordered to attend sensitivity training because of their disparaging comments about Alaska Natives."
Shushannah Walshe of the Daily Beast recently secured a rare interview with Sarah Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, and tried to extract some more concrete information about their daughter's political plans.
Though Palin's mother, Sally Heath, admitted to Walshe that running for president "would be a tough thing to do," her father, Chuck, said that the decision is completely up to their daughter.
All-in-all, however, it seems like Sarah Palin is keeping the whole presidential idea close to the vest, Walshe reports:
They don't know her plans, the Heaths are quick to add, in their first national interview in over a year. But "it would be fun to find out some day," Sally says, with a contagious laugh.