Sarah Palin hints at Senate run against Republican Lisa Murkowski

The former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has hinted at a run for US Senate.

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“If God wants me to do it I will,” Palin recently told Ché Ahn, leader of the New Apostolic Reformation movement, according to Right Wing Watch, a progressive advocacy group, and footage posted to social media.

Palin would be running against Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who has not been as steadfast in her support of Donald Trump as most others in the GOP in Congress.

“I would say you guys better be there for me this time, because a lot of people were not there for me last time,” Palin told her Christian audience, referring to her spell as running mate to John McCain in 2008.

Palin was a relative unknown when McCain picked her to run against Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The campaign was a disaster for the Republican party as Palin was widely mocked for her perceived ignorance and unsuitability to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. Obama won clearly.

But Palin’s rise to prominence is now seen as a key moment on the road to the presidency of Donald Trump.

Her time on the national stage prefigured both the anti-tax Tea Party movement and the rise of the ex-reality TV host from New York, who was impeached twice and whose time in the White House ended with the deadly assault on the Capitol on 6 January in service of his lies about electoral fraud.

In discussing a possible Senate run, Palin dismissed a Republican woman already in the race and endorsed by Trump.

Palin said she had “never heard” of Kelly Tshibaka, a state official who has taken aim at Murkowski over her vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the 6 January riot.

Murkowski’s vote earned her formal censure by the Alaska Republican party. She is an experienced senator and campaigner, having won her seat in 2010 as a write-in candidate against a Republican aligned with the Tea Party movement.

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Palin has appeared with Trump over the years but has not been a consistent national political presence since she resigned as governor of Alaska in 2009.

Speaking to Ahn, she claimed to have been persecuted by her political enemies and said: “There’s a difference between quitting and saying enough is enough.”

Palin said she would pray about a possible Senate run. She also said “America was dedicated to God” and said the US left was attempting to “fundamentally transform the nation that does belong to God”.

“How dare we take from God what is his and say we’re going to do what we want to do with it?” she asked.