Sarah Palin To Bill O’Reilly: Political Candidates Can Never Be Too Far Right

When Sarah Palin visited The O’Reilly Factor on election eve, we had a sense that they’d unleash upon us delicious morsels of political wisdom. For instance, the increasingly moderate Bill O’Reilly confronted Mrs. Palin about the merits of political extremism. “Can you be too far right in this country?” he asked Palin. Her response? “No!” Perhaps a signal of how she may run a 2012 presidential campaign?

O’Reilly seemed eager to counter Palin’s polarizing idealogy, citing that Mike Castle had a better chance at defeating Chris Coons than Christine O’Donnell, and that New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is so far right that he “wants to go in with a baseball bat.”

“If you get candidates who do say crazy things, on the right or the left,” O’Reilly reasoned, all but pointing to Palin, “I think most Americans aren’t going to vote for them.”

As David Edwards writes for RawStory:

Palin didn’t agree with that logic. “That kind of thinking of just embracing the status quo, old guys that maybe could have been a safe bet and could have just won anyway, that status quo, that is the mess that we’re in,” said Palin.

“Can you be too far right in this country?” asked O’Reilly.

“At this point in time with the state of the union? No!” exclaimed Palin.

“A far right bent would be healthy — we need a balance of power,” she continued. “Look at this extreme liberalism that has control of the House, the Senate and the White House. No, we got to balance that out.”

It was only two years ago that Palin warned against “far left” politicians taking over the country.

Naturally, the conversation turned toward whether Palin would run in ’12. She, as expected, didn’t give O’Reilly a straight answer.

Watch the interview from last night’s Factor: