I saw this come across Americablog without links, and it's been spreading and has now been picked up by the CBS blog "From the Road."
Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should "absolutely" launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to "stop the terrorists from coming any further in," a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night’s presidential debate...
They go on to give quotes from the debate,
and then the question - response at the Cheesesteak restaurant:
"How about the Pakistan situation?" Rovito asked. "What’s your thoughts about that."
"In Pakistan?" Palin responded.
"What’s going on over there, like Waziristian?"
"It’s working with Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border," Palin said. "And we’ll go from there."
"Waziristan is blowing up," Rovito replied.
"Yeah, it is," Palin said. "And the economy there is blowing up, too."
"So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?" Rovito asked.
"If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said.
She's a disaster for them in an interesting way - she doesn't do nuance. She just comes out with whatever, which may work for local politics, but doesn't work in delicate international affairs. I'll be interested (hell, I'm salivating) to see how this works out in the VP debates. I've seen the Alaska governor's debate clips, and I think she did well there. I don't want to underestimate her. But in the clips she's dealing with social conservative issues which involve things she is very interested in and has a passionate personal opinion on. Not so for most issues I'd expect to come up in the VP debate. We shall see...