Sarah Palin took aim at the Republican Party on Sunday, criticizing it for moving away from “the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan.”

In fact, the former Alaska governor and one-time vice presidential nominee even voiced support for starting a new party as a home for similarly disenchanted conservatives.

While on Fox News Saturday, Palin responded to a viewer’s tweeted question, “Would you & Mark Levin be willing to build a ‘Freedom Party’ if GOP continues to ignore conservatives?”

Saying “I love the name of that party,” she agreed with the possibility.

Palin’s comments seem directed at the wing of the party with “that libertarian streak,” which has grown disenchanted with mainstream (i.e., “moderate”) Republicans and led to the rise of the tea party movement in 2010. Just last week she took to her Facebook page to criticize the immigration reform bill before the Senate.

When it passed on Thursday with a large margin of support, she once again took a critical turn on the social media site. Saying that the GOP “just abandoned the Reagan Democrats,” she attributed Mitt Romney’s loss in last year’s presidential election to “the loss of working class voters in swing states…not the Hispanic vote.”

The Christian Science Monitor’s Peter Grier thinks it unlikely that Palin will, in fact, jump the GOP ship. But he does point out that she may be on the right path with the election analysis. Referencing a recent study by RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende, he says, “The biggest reason Romney lost was a decline in white voters from 2008 to 2012.” The ones who dropped out of the voting pool? “[G]enerally downscale, rural Northern whites.”

But Grier also notes that despite having harsh words for today’s immigration bill and the Republicans who support it, she backed something similar when she was John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

If she is serious, Palin might want to take a look at the Libertarian Party that already exists rather than start something from scratch. But the main problem the GOP has faced since the advent of the tea party and success of Ron Paul in recent years has been the tension between social conservatives and those live-and-let-live, really-small-government libertarians. That in turn has brought intramural squabbles into full public view.

It could also be debatable whether the views of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and the former Alaska governor truly sync up as much as she seemed to imply. The GOP (as well as the definitions of “liberalism” and “conservatism”) certainly evolved quite a bit since forming out of the ashes of a dying party itself – the Whigs back in the 1850s.

Will Palin create a Freedom Party? Share your thoughts in the comments section.