Sarah Palin jabs at Mitt Romney over debt ceiling

Sarah Palin still isn’t running for president, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still want to stir up the race.

In a Tuesday appearance on Fox News, the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee took Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to task for his silence during the recent debt-limit debate in Washington, accusing him of being a finger-in-the-wind politician. (Watch video below.)

“Bless his heart, I have respect for Mitt Romney, but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt-increase debate,” Palin told host Sean Hannity.

“He did this,” she said, lifting her finger in the air. “He waited until it was a done deal.”

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, had stayed largely silent during the debt debate that gripped Washington in recent weeks, before eventually coming out against the accord struck among congressional Republicans, Democrats and President Obama.

Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor and another Republican running for president, also criticized Romney this week for staying on the sidelines. During a swing through New Hampshire, he said “to dodge the debate or to wait until the debate is over effectively and to take a side, I don’t consider that to be leadership.” Huntsman has said he supports the compromise.

Palin, who said on Fox News that she still hadn’t “made up my mind” about running, was asked to name who among the GOP contenders for president had been a leader on the debt issue.

“Michele Bachmann,” Palin said of the conservative Minnesota congresswoman, who was a vocal opponent of raising the debt ceiling. “She spoke out and she cast her vote according to her principles.”

shane.goldmacher@latimes.com