Oil exploration should be left up to the states, eh, Senator McCain? Someone send him the tape of Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s appearance last night on Larry Kudlow’s show. Kudlow, over on his NRO blog “Kudlow’s Money Politic$,” describes the segment thus :

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, frequently touted by conservatives as Sen. McCain’s running mate, gave an outstanding performance last night on Kudlow & Co. It was drill, drill, drill — all the way. In particular, she said look, if the people of Alaska want to drill in ANWR, why should the Congress in Washington stop this? She added that there are tens of billions of more barrels of oil both onshore and offshore Alaska. Yes, it might take five years to get ANWR on line. But we have to start sometime to solve a problem of massive oil prices. Gov. Palin also said John McCain is wrong about ANWR and that she hopes to persuade him of that. And she agreed with me that we need an America-first energy policy that deregulates and decontrols all possible energy sources, unleashing the U.S. energy business. She was clearheaded and plainspoken. Very impressive.

Now, I’m one of the folks who hold out hope for McCain giving the veep nod to Palin, though I realize she’s a darkhorse — and for family reasons as much as policy ones. Considering the Arizona senator has reversed himself on outer-shelf oil exploration, he might yet change his mind on ANWR. I mean, what is the Obama campaign going to do? Accuse him of flip-flopping?