THE REPUBLICAN vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has called for a "clean break" with President Bush's energy policies, claiming that her experience in Alaska showed she was prepared to take on the big oil companies.
Mrs Palin gave her second major policy address of the campaign amid reports that conservatives are already grooming her for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
The Politicoreported yesterday that Mrs Palin will be a major focus of discussion when a group of senior conservatives will meet in Virginia two days after the election to talk about strategy.
If John McCain wins the election, conservatives will see the Alaska governor as their most senior ally in the White House; if he loses, Mrs Palin will be a frontrunner to carry the conservative banner in four years' time.
In Toledo, Ohio yesterday, Mrs Palin linked the issue of energy independence to national security, chiding the Bush administration for relying too heavily on imported oil. "We not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror, we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves," she said.
"Across the world are pipelines, refineries, transit routes and terminals for the oil we rely on. And al-Qaeda terrorists know where they are."
Mrs Palin said she had stood up to oil companies in her state in negotiations over a new pipeline and took a shot at Alaska senator Ted Stevens, a Republican who was convicted on Monday on federal corruption charges.
"As you may have seen in the news this week, Alaska's senior senator is not the first man to discover the hazards of getting too close to moneyed interests with agendas of their own," she said.
Barack Obama's latest television ad uses Mrs Palin against Mr McCain, quoting remarks he made last year suggesting he does not understand the economy as well as he should. The ad quotes the Republican as saying: "I might have to rely on a vice-president that I select" for expertise on economic issues, and then shows footage of Mrs Palin winking.
The latest polls show Mr Obama leading by six points nationally and ahead, or tied, in all the major battleground states, but Mr McCain's chief pollster said yesterday that the Republican can still win next Tuesday.
"The McCain campaign has made impressive strides over the last week of tracking," Bill McInturff said in a memo to campaign staff. "The campaign is functionally tied across the battleground states . . . with our numbers improving sharply over the last four tracks."
Mr McInturff acknowledged that African-Americans and young voters were likely to turn out in record numbers next week, but he predicted that other groups would also vote in unprecedented numbers and that undecided voters were likely to vote for the Republican.
"They have significant hesitations about Senator Obama's experience and judgment," he said.
"Given an Obama TV media barrage we have not witnessed since the last candidate to run without public financing, Richard Nixon in 1972 . . . it is my sense these voters will vote in this election and will break decisively in our direction," he said.
