Palin still undecided on White House run

Palin didn't say anything definitive in a 40-minute speech in Iowa today.

When The Des Moines Register caught up with her at the rope line afterward, she shrugged when asked if late September is still a good timeline for a decision one way or the other.

"I'm still not ready to make any kind of an announcement," Palin said as she signed a handgun for an NRA benefit with a silver paint marker.

"I'm still trying to figure it out, if it's the right thing to do."

In her speech, Palin said the challenge is not simply to replace President Barack Obama in 2012, "it's who and what we will replace him with," a feisty Sarah Palin told a crowd in Iowa this afternoon.

That's when the crowd began to yell "Sar-ah! Sar-ah!"

After pausing for a few seconds, she pushed on: "Folks, you know it's not enough to just change up the uniform —1/8 if we don't change the game plan."The Alaska governor-turned-reality-TV-star-turned-conservative-icon made her third trip to Iowa this year for a Tea Party of America rally in Indianola, an event that drew a brave crowd of about 2,000 willing to sit in dripping wet lawn chairs in a driving rain.

Not only does Obama need to be held in check, but the GOP presidential candidates need to be prevented from participating in "crony capitalism," Palin said.

Pay to play politics led to bailouts for Wall Street cronies and union bosses and green energy giveaways, she said.

"Our country can't afford more trillion-dollar thank-you notes to campaign backers," she said.

Palin added: "Like you, I'm not for sale."

The country is at a tipping point and "it's time restore a country that we love," Palin said. And tea partiers need to fight relentlessly to "restore all that is free and good and right about America."

Palin read from notes, but ad libbed, too, in a jovial speech laced with razor-edged quips. She painted herself as a sage who saw the country's credit-rating down grade. Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, pointed to cited the partisan gridlock as a key factor in the historic decision last month.

Palin said: "When we did finally get slapped then with that big inevitable down grade, the politicians and the pundits they turned around and they blamed us. Independent, common sense conservatives! They called us un-American, and terrorists and suicide bombers, and —" hobbits?"

She teased FEMA officials use of the phrase "federal family" when referring to government.

"Am I too old to ask to be emancipated? Never thought I'd say it, but I want a divorce!"

Palin ripped on the "permanent political class" that she says promotes good old boy politics. She derided public opinion polls, saying "usually polls are for strippers and cross country skiers."

It's up to the patriotic constitutionalists to continue the fight, Palin said.

"You will be demonized. They'll mock you. They'll make things up. They'll tell you to go to hell."

But "we'll keep it classy" and not respond with disdain, she said.

Palin demurred when asked about the mixup with Delaware's Christine O'Donnell.

The Tea Party of America rally organizers invited O'Donnell, a Republican who has lost two bids for the U.S. Senate, to be a warm-up act for Palin.

They disinvited her when they got emails criticizing O'Donnell, then re-invited her when she gracefully wished them well anyway. The next day, after Palin's aides telephoned with requests for program planning, they canceled her yet again.

Asked to explain the truth about what happened, Palin told the Register: "Oh, I didn't organize this, so I don't know."