Donald Trump, the reality television star-turned-politician, was endorsed by Sarah Palin to be the next Republican U.S. president said on Tuesday (January 19).
To voters, it may seem a natural fit. Though she never made it to the White House after becoming the party’s vice presidential pick in 2008, Palin’s style, which showed a candidate could be popular by eschewing policy minutiae in favor of plain-speaking, is seen as a precursor to Trump’s recent success.
“Ready for someone who will secure our borders, secure our jobs and to secure our homes. Ready to make America great again, are you ready to stump for Trump? I am here to support the next president of the United States Donald Trump,” Palin said during a campaign rally in Ames, Iowa.
Trump said he was greatly honored by the endorsement. “When I heard that she was going to endorse me I was so honored, you have no idea how honored,” Trump said at the rally.
Trump is in a tight contest with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for the support of Iowa Republicans, who lean conservative and whose evangelical Christians comprise a major voting bloc.
Palin was in her first term as governor of Alaska in 2008 when U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee in that year’s presidential election, picked her as his running mate.
She was folksy, and liked to suggest there were no fiercer fighters for conservative values than a small-town “hockey mom.” She was a former beauty-pageant winner who professed a love of hunting with guns, and thought it more important that the United States increase drilling for oil than fret about climate change.
Trump is a real estate billionaire from New York City who has taken to vigorously insulting politicians in both parties while demonizing Muslims and some Mexicans, an unusual approach in U.S. presidential politics. He has been polling as the voters’ favorite on the Republican side for months, with Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, the leading Democratic candidate.
McCain and Palin lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but by then Palin’s transformation from a little-known politician to national celebrity was complete. Countless Americans wore Sarah Palin costumes for Halloween that year: hair piled high in an up-do, librarian spectacles, red power suit.
In 2009, she resigned as Alaska’s governor, and has since worked as a conservative political commentator and as the producer and star of lightly staged television shows about her large family enjoying Alaska’s rugged landscapes. (Reuters)
