She's willing to stand up for what's right for America -- and isn't one of those NIMBY creeps like Teddy Kennedy who is unwilling to have a little personal inconvenience in order to make this country energy independent.

In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and key members of Congress, Governor Palin stressed the need to enact an energy policy that includes oil and gas production from domestic sources, since failure to enact a sound energy policy is having real-life consequences. The Governor reminded members of Congress that the footprint of development would be less than 2,000 acres. She also assured members that any development would be conducted in a responsible and environmentally safe manner.

Bravo, Governor -- especially for the statistic cited in your letter that the area of drilling would be less than 1/4 the size of Dulles Airport. Or to use a different yardstick, the area is 80% the size of Boston's Logan International Airport in an area nearly three times the size of Massachusetts! In other words, the footprint of the development is miniscule.

Does this help Palin's case to be the GOP VP nominee, or does it hurt it? I'm not sure. On the one hand, it does show her to be a ballsy politician willing to take a stand. On the other hand, John McCain doesn't support drilling in ANWR. In the end, though, I don't think she is a serious candidate right now.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin as a GOP candidate for president in 2012 or 2016? I could see it -- and think that any ticket composed of her and Bobby Jindal would be a winner.

UPDATE: Great interview with Gov. Palin by Larry Kudlow.

Kudlow: Why don’t we just liberate, and decontrol, and deregulate the whole bloody energy business – whether it’s oil, gas, shale, nuclear, coal, natural gas, as well as wind and solar – why don’t we just decontrol, deregulate, go for an America first energy policy? Get independent of Saudi Arabia? America first. Create all of these millions of high paying jobs. Why isn’t anybody talking about that in this race? That’s the natural, Reaganesque thing to do. Isn’t it?

Palin: Yeah absolutely! You’re hitting the nail right on the head. That’s what so many of us normal Americans are asking. The same thing. Why aren’t the candidates talking like that? Where we can secure America and we can be more independent when we talk about energy sources if we could drill domestically.

Here we sent [Energy] Secretary Bodman overseas the other day, and our president had to visit the Saudis a few weeks ago, to ask them to ramp up development. That’s nonsense. Not when you know that we have the supplies here. You have the supplies in your sister state called Alaska, where we’re ready, willing and we’re able to pump these supplies of energy, flow them into hungry markets across the U.S. We want it to happen. It’s Congress holding us back.

A real plan for American energy independence. Go Sarah!

H/T Hot Air, STACLU