Roger Stone: Palin Made the Right Move

(NEWSMAX).Political analyst and Republican Party strategist Roger Stone tells Newsmax.TV that he disagrees with the chattering class in Washington and believes the only way Sarah Palin could remain a viable presidential candidate in 2012 or beyond was to leave the governorship of Alaska.

Stone says the unyielding assault of the liberal media attacking Palin for being homespun, plain spoken, middle class and simple, lead to her decision to repair the political damage. He notes Palin has the most valuable thing a politician can have in presidential politics: she has a favorability rating of more than 20 percent of the American people who say they love her, and more than 60 percent of Republicans.

“She has a national political base,” Stone says. “Mitt Romney does not have that; None of the other potential presidential candidates who’ve been mentioned have that,Palin has now freed herself to cultivate that base.

“I think Sarah Palin has that opportunity,” Stone says. “She is hated by the media elite because of what she represents: a homegrown conservative and true outsider. She represents everything the media hates. They don’t believe that unless you went to Yale or Harvard or the right law school. Unless you’re from Washington or New York or the Boston-New York corridor, you couldn’t possibly know anything about America.”

“That is not to say she hasn’t made her own mistakes,” Stone admits. “She has. She is not experienced at this level of political combat. But she has the charisma, she has the presence, she has the conservative values, and she has the perseverance to remake herself into the ‘New Palin.’