SARAH Palin has accused Barack Obama of being embarrassed by the US and of regarding white Americans as racist.
The claims by the ex-Republican vice-presidential candidate come from a book to be released today that could be a platform for the White House in 2012. In America by Heart, Ms Palin casts doubt on whether the US President is proud of his country. “Ordinary Americans are tired of Obama’s global apology tour and of hearing about what a weak country America is from left-wing professors and journalists,” she writes.
Ms Palin attacks Mr Obama over race by linking him to the radical views of his former African-American pastor in Chicago, Jeremiah Wright.
She says Mr Obama – based on comments made by his wife, Michelle, that she was proud of the US for the first time as an adult when her husband won primary races for the presidency in 2008 – appeared to believe that “patriotic Americans” were racist and the US was a “fundamentally unjust and unequal country”.
“In retrospect, I guess this shouldn’t surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church listening to his rants against America and white people,” Ms Palin writes.
Mr Obama was forced to distance himself from the views of Mr Wright during the presidential campaign after the pastor had claimed the US brought the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on itself.
The release of Ms Palin’s book comes as a new opinion poll on Republican Party frontrunners for the 2012 presidential race shows she is the most favoured candidate among her party’s supporters.
But the Quinnipiac poll found Ms Palin lacks the popular support to defeat Mr Obama.
The poll gave Mr Obama a convincing lead of 48-40 per cent over Ms Palin, despite doubts among a majority of voters about the President’s handling of the US economy.
Ironically, the Quinnipiac poll showed another potential Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, could beat Mr Obama in 2012 by a margin of 45-44 per cent. But Mr Romney is less likely to win the Republican nomination at this stage: he came a close second to Ms Palin among party voters.
The poll gave Ms Palin top position, with 19 per cent support among Republican supporters.
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