Nashville, Tenn., US:
Sarah Palin said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that she would consider a run for the White House in 2012 "if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family."
"It would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," Palin told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" in an interview recorded a few hours before she gave the keynote address at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. "I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."
Those words were buttressed by the response she received at the convention on Saturday night. As Palin left the stage, the crowd erupted into chants of "Run, Sarah, Run."
Palin gave the Tea Party crowd exactly what it wanted, declaring the primacy of the Tenth Amendment in limiting government powers, complaining about the bailouts and the "generational theft" of rising deficits and urging the audience to back conservative challengers in contested primaries.
"America is ready for another revolution!" she told the crowd, prompting the first of several standing ovations.
While Palin told Fox News that she approved of President Barack Obama's strengthening of the US military force in Afghanistan, she was dismissive of his decision to try some high-profile terrorism suspects in civilian courtrooms in the United States. She called on Attorney General Eric H Holder Jr, who formally made that decision, to resign.
In the Fox interview, Wallace took note of a poll showing Palin leading other potential Republican candidates with 16 per cent of the respondents and asked if she was more knowledgeable on domestic and foreign matters now than during her run in 2008 as the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
"I would hope so," she replied. Before she was chosen as John McCain's running mate, she said, her "engagement was with the state of Alaska" and such issues as increasing energy production. She was often criticised during that campaign as being ignorant on critical policy matters.
"Now that my focus has been enlarged, I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues," she said during the interview.
For Palin, the weekend was filled with renewed speculation about her political future.
She left Nashville for Texas, where she spent part of Sunday on the stump with Gov Rick Perry.
"I doubt there is another public figure in our country who gives liberals a bigger case of the hives than our special guest today," said Perry, who is facing a March 2 primary challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. "At the very mention of her name, the liberals, the progressives, the media elites - they literally foam at the mouth."
Palin's appearance at the Tea Party convention was closely watched as a potential signal of her political future and the extent to which the convention would embrace her. But Palin, while aligning herself firmly with the Tea Party, nevertheless urged the 1,100 people who had gathered in a hotel ballroom not to let the movement be defined by any one leader.
"This is about the people, and it's bigger than any one king or queen of a Tea Party, and it's a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter," she said.
That was just one of several digs at Obama. (Palin read a prepared speech.)
"How's that hopey-changey thing working out for you?" she asked at one point. She criticised the president for allowing deficits to rise, for "apologising for America" in speeches in other countries, and for allowing a man with explosives to board a plane headed for the United States on Christmas Day, saying the president was weak in the fight against terrorism.
"To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law," she said.
Palin gave little hint to her political plans in a brief question-and-answer period after her speech. She said she would support those candidates who "understand free market principles" and "personal responsibility."
Without saying which candidates she would support, she said she would campaign for conservative challengers in some Republican primaries.
"This is how we're going to find the cream of the crop to face a challenger in the general," she said. "Let's not be afraid of contested primaries."