Palin Speech Leaks

Sarah Palin’s international debutante ball is over: The former Alaska governor spoke overseas on Wednesday for the first time, in Hong Kong. The comments were supposed to be off the record, but The Wall Street Journal obtained a recording. Palin blamed the world financial crisis on government excess, saying “We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place," and then adding, "We're not interested in government fixes, we're interested in freedom.” Other subjects included health care, China (“[China] "rightfully makes a lot of people nervous”), and her political philosophy of “common-sense conservatism,” which consists, mostly, of using the phrase “common sense” a lot. “It's just common sense that government attempts to solve problems like [the] health-care problem will just create new problems,” she said at one point, defending her “death panels” charge.