WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin must decide soon and will likely join the Republican presidential contest, GOP political strategist Karl Rove said Sunday.
"I'm not much of a gambler, but I'd put a little more money that she gets in than if she doesn't, because of the schedule she's got next week in Iowa -- it looks like that of a candidate, not a celebrity," Rove, Fox News Channel political analyst and former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, told "Fox News Sunday."
Rove added a video Palin's political action committee released Friday "strikes me as pre-presidential campaign."
Palin is to make the keynote address at a Tea Party of America "Restoring America" rally in Waukee, Iowa, near Des Moines, Sept. 3.
She did not say if she would declare her candidacy then, but has said she would likely make her decision known by September.
"Her difficulty is, if she doesn't get in shortly after next week, then I think people are going to basically say she's not in," Rove told the program.
"You can only tease so many times in the political process, and I think she is getting to the end of that," he said.
Rove also condemned Obama's economic policies, saying they had "utterly failed" and Americans were "fed up" with them.
"This is the seventh or eighth or ninth time that we've heard the president talked about producing a plan," Rove said. "And each time that he sort of gotten around or tossing an idea on the table, it is included only more spending, more deficit, more debt."
Obama had a Democratic Congress for two-thirds of his term in office and he still wasn't able to improve the U.S. jobless rate, Rove said.
"The president has yet to lay out a plan," he said.
The unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in July, down from 9.2 percent in June, but the decrease was mainly because some people had simply given up looking for work, the U.S. Labor Department reported Aug. 5.
Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, the department said.
Former Obama White House Deputy Communications Director Bill Burton told told "Fox News Sunday" the U.S. economy added 2.3 million jobs under Obama.
Obama would "be the first to tell you that he's not satisfied with the progress. But I'll tell you what -- he's not had a lot of willing partners in the Republican Party to actually move forward on important jobs legislation."
Republicans "have a choice," Burton said. "They can either work with him or they can continue to stop progress. And if they continue to stop progress, then that is the fight that we'll have in November and the American people can decide in November which direction they want this country to go in."
