THE FORMER vice-presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin delivered what some commentators billed as her “State of the Union” address at the weekend.
“America is ready for another revolution and you are part of this,” Ms Palin told a 1,100-strong audience in Nashville Tennessee. She bounded on to the stage to cries of “Run, Sarah, run!” by supporters who hope she will seek the presidency of the US in 2012.
When asked on the right-wing television channel Fox News yesterday whether she will be a candidate, Ms Palin replied, “I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country”.
She reportedly got $100,000 for her Nashville speech. She has promised to donate her speaking fee “to the cause”.
Ms Palin's notoriety – and personal fortune – has grown since she resigned as governor of Alaska last July. She now claims 1.3 million "friends" on Facebook and Harper Collins has printed three million copies of her best-selling book Going Rogue.
She has signed a lucrative contract with Fox, who are installing a fully-equipped television studio in Palin’s home in Wasilla, Alaska.
The Nashville speech made Ms Palin the de facto leader of the amorphous Tea Party movement, a grassroots assortment of disgruntled conservatives who last year protested against the bank bail- out and the $787 billion stimulus package, then focused their discontent on healthcare reform.
Late last summer, town hall meetings turned ugly, with some tea-partiers comparing President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and querying his US citizenship.
The Nashville convention was organised by Tea Party Nation, but was boycotted by related groups like Tea Party Patriots and the Washington-based Freedom Works amid accusations of profiteering. Tea Party Nation charged $549 for the three-day convention, not including hotel and transportation. For $349, one could see Palin’s speech only.
The “tea-partiers” take their name from the 1793 Boston Tea Party, when American immigrants dumped tea into Boston harbour rather than pay British tax on it. In Nashville, some guests wore powdered wigs and tri-cornered hats.
US liberals deride modern-day tea-partiers as “tea-baggers”. Sterling silver tea-bag pendants were on sale in Nashville. The tea-partiers define their “first principles” as less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states’ rights and national security.
Ms Palin began her 40-minute, folksy speech by paying homage to Ronald Reagan. She mocked Democrats, saying: “A year later, how is all that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” she said the Tea Party movement should not “be defined by any one leader or any one politician” because it is “not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-up call to action . . . It’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter”.
The “guy with the teleprompter” was, of course, President Obama, whom Ms Palin also compared to a “professor of law standing at the lectern” when America needs a real commander-in-chief.
Taking up a widespread grievance of conservatives, Ms Palin faulted authorities for alerting the “underwear bomber” to his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. She criticised Obama for devoting only nine minutes of his State of the Union address to foreign policy.
Ms Palin said the Republican Party “would be really smart to try to absorb” as much of the Tea Party as possible. But relations between the Grand Old Party and the tea-partiers are awkward, with mainstream Republicans treating the tea-partiers like embarrassing country cousins. Michael Steele, the Republican chairman, declined an invitation to Nashville citing “scheduling issues”.
Ms Palin said the election of the Republican Scott Brown to the late Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat “represents what this beautiful movement is all about. It’s about a guy with a truck and a passion to serve our country . . . [who] decided he was going to do his part to put our government back on the side of the people”.
But Mr Brown, like Gov Robert McDonnell of Virginia, another rising star in the Republican Party, has kept Palin at arm’s length. Mr Brown said he had never spoken to Palin, but later corrected himself, saying her phone call on his election night “slipped [his] mind”.