Palin may be slipping in polls but her approach appears to be gaining favour
WASHINGTON - She has dominated the airwaves across America for close on 18 months.
She has written a best-selling memoir.
She was queen of the first conservative "tea party" convention which further burnished her image as a United States presidential contender.
So it will have come as a shock to Sarah Palin, who has held out the prospect that she would run in 2012, that 71 per cent of Americans do not consider the former Alaska Governor as presidential material.
There is no doubt that Palin is a phenomenon. Plucked from political obscurity by Senator John McCain who chose her as his running mate in the 2008 contest against Barack Obama, the folksy but inexperienced Palin seemed like the perfect antidote to politics as usual in Washington.
Palinmania swept America. She believes she was picked because it was "God's plan".
But under the remorseless glare of the media, the star of the self-described hockey mom began to fade. Then, just as abruptly as she had burst on to the political scene, she announced that she was resigning as Governor.
She settled scores with her detractors in her own book, Going Rogue, and her book tour attracted crowds of adoring fans.
But a portrait of Palin in a new book by two American journalists who followed the campaign, Game Change, is devastating.
It seems that after carrying out only a token vetting process which the McCain campaign would live to regret, the senator was warned that Palin might be certifiably bonkers.
It describes how, while being prepared for media interviews and public appearances, as piles of crib cards mounted in front of her, she would withdraw into catatonic silence.
Not exactly what you would expect from a future Commander in Chief.
There was no sign of the index cards on February 6 at the Nashville convention of the tea party movement, a grassroots protest group that sprang up last year.
Unfortunately for Palin, she was photographed with prompt notes scrawled on the palm of her hand as she delivered her 40 minute keynote speech, almost half of which was devoted to foreign policy - the area on which her ignorance has been most on display and for which she has been mercilessly teased.
She drew the biggest cheers when she turned to domestic politics to decry the size of the national debt and urged acceptance of "common sense solutions".
This is the territory on which the next presidential election will be fought. Whether Palin is a candidate or not - and the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 71 per cent of Americans found that she is not qualified to be President - the tea baggers have radicalised US politics.
In the mid-term elections next November, even McCain faces a primary against a "common sense" conservative.
Their platform is anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortion and pro-gun. If the 45th President of the United States is to be a Republican, he or she will have to cater to their views.
Mitt Romney, who is expected to run again in 2012, became known as the "Mormon flip flopper" in 2008 as the Massachusetts liberal turned to the right to attract votes.
He would need to overcome the distrust of Catholics and the powerful Evangelicals to win the nomination.
Mike Huckabee, who is now much better known nationally than in the 2008 race thanks to a slot on Fox News, is a religious conservative himself whose apparent homespun simplicity could appeal to the "tea baggers".
Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota Governor who has decided against running for a third term next November, is another possible contender, although he needs to use the time to become better known on the national scene.
But aside from Palin, the Republican maverick whose name is on everyone's lips is Scott Brown, who shot from the Massachusetts state senate to be elected as the successor to Ted Kennedy, propelled by the tea baggers' disgust with Washington.
Asked what kind of Republican he is, the one-time Cosmopolitan centrefold nude highlights his independence by replying: "a Scott Brown Republican".
In her Nashville speech, Palin praised him for representing "what this beautiful movement is all about.
He was just a guy with a truck and a passion to serve our country.
He looked around and he saw that things weren't quite right in Washington, so he stood up and he decided he was going do his part to put our government back on the side of the people."
And so, in a crowded field, it is easy to see how the next President could come out of left field. In 2008 it was Barack Obama.
