Does ‘She” have what it takes. We think not, but she’s great to look at. Watch out suckers! Don’t be had again. The last person to offer hope and change – is sitting in the White House – and look what that got you! (Ed.)

NASHVILLE — After flirting coyly for months, Sarah Palin this weekend launches an aggressive play to become the leader of the tea party movement, a move with major political upside for the former Alaska governor but also one rife with risk.

Her positioning could boost her prospects of securing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, which she is widely believed to be eyeing. And the tea party is a natural fit for Palin, whose populist anti-Washington rhetoric and working mom persona have made her a movement favorite since its grass-roots activists burst onto the scene last year in opposition to the big-spending initiatives of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Palin compared the movement to the American Revolution and the struggle for civil rights, while identifying with its activists, in an op-ed piece this week in USA Today. And her keynote speech Saturday night to a gathering here that bills itself as the first National Tea Party Convention will be followed by appearances at recently announced tea party rallies in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown next month and in Boston in April.

But embracing the movement also has a potential downside. Not only could it drag her into the controversies and in-fighting that have swirled around the movement; it also could further alienate the independents and Democrats who were left with a sour taste from her 2008 GOP vice presidential campaign. And the chaotic collection of local groups that make up the movement may not accept her — or anyone else — as a leader anyway.

Though 35 percent of independents have a favorable impression of the tea party movement, 24 percent hold a negative view, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released this week. It found that an overwhelming three-quarters of Republicans have a positive impression of the movement, while two-thirds of Democrats hold an unfavorable view.

Still, another survey found the tea party brand outpolls the embattled Republican Party, and Palin reinforced the impression that tea partiers are the most desired bloc of the conservative electorate when she turned down an invitation to speak at this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, traditionally a must-attend for establishment conservatives and Republicans, while choosing to speak here in Nashville.

Palin also has endeared herself to tea partiers in recent months by endorsing movement candidates including Doug Hoffman of New York and Rand Paul of Kentucky in their congressional primary campaigns against GOP establishment-backed candidates.

“There is huge potential reward for Palin to become the formal iconic figurehead of the tea party,” said Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist who advised the Republican presidential campaign of George W. Bush in 2000 and helped prep Palin for her 2008 debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden. “But, if she accepts that mantel, she has to accept the risks of a movement that is so decentralized right now that there is little accountability, no rules and no clear agenda other than anger.”

If it works, McKinnon said, it could take both the movement and Palin to the next level because “for the tea party to be successful, it has to have a leader. And I think in order for Sarah Palin to be successful, she has to lead a movement.”

But among the activists gathered here for the convention, there isn’t clear consensus about whether the movement needs, or is ready for, a leader. Even those who answered “yes” to both questions seemed reluctant to anoint Palin as the movement’s standard-bearer, or 2012 candidate.

“She hasn’t been chosen,” said Dave Rilling, a 76-year-old retiree from Gaffney, S.C. “She’ll have to compete like anyone else,” he said, listing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as other potential standard-bearers, and suggesting Palin needs to articulate clearer stances on a wider range of issues.

“Now that she’s written her personal book,” he said, “she’s going to need to write a second one explaining her philosophy and where she’d like to go.”

To be sure, her impending appearance had the convention — where the program features a full-page glossy glamour shot of Palin and one sign depicting her holding her toddler son declared her to be “Momma Bear” — buzzing with anticipation Friday.

In the October e-mail inviting Palin to attend, one of the convention organizers Sherry Phillips predicted “there is nowhere in the world she would receive a warmer welcome,” and explained to Palin’s people “everyone involved in this movement LOVES Gov. Palin and feel she embodies everything this movement is about.”

Yet, Chuck Smith, a 66-year-old convention-goer from the Knoxville area, said “it may be too early for the movement to have a leader. I think Sarah Palin is more of a symbol of a grass-roots, everyday, hard-working American fighting back against Big Government.”

That’s why the Tea Party Express, the group behind the Nevada and Boston rallies, has been courting Palin for months to appear at one of its rallies, said Mark Williams, an official with the group.

“I see her as possibly becoming the media face of the movement, kind of like Al Sharpton is the official black guy,” he said. “This movement defies anybody who wants to be a leader of the movement, as such. So, I don’t see her or anybody else becoming the real leader.”

Having a leader could change the character of the movement, but it also could help move it past the petty squabbles and financial questions that some conservatives believe have hampered its effectiveness as a political force, according to Erick Erickson, the influential RedState.com blogger. He has been among the highest profile critics of the finances and motivations of some groups involved in the movement, including Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation, the group behind the Nashville convention.

Erickson blogged that the convention “smells scammy” and worried that Palin, who is being paid $100,000 to speak, “might be ruining herself unintentionally” by affiliating herself with the organizers.

But after committing to meet here Friday with Mark Skoda, one of the convention organizers, Erickson had softened somewhat. He said Palin, who forged a reputation as a corruption fighter in Alaska by taking on a GOP establishment regarded as ethically compromised, could do the same for the tea party movement.

“If she inserts herself into the mix and uses her position and authority to clean house, I think the tea party movement will be far, far better off with Sarah Palin than without her,” said Erickson.

Still, he conceded the movement arose partly “because it lacks a leader. The reason these guys have taken to the streets in protest and are now getting involved in campaigns is because all the people who have said they are one of them who went to Washington betrayed them. Once it has a leader, it will either become a different force or will go away once it puts its leader in a position to affect policy.”

As for Palin, Erickson said she could “totally rehabilitate herself in the eyes of the public who were left with a negative impression of her and really rally people. The issues that she is talking about these days resonate with a majority of Americans regardless of party.”

But conservative writer Matthew Continetti in the Weekly Standard this week saw less upside for Palin. He cautioned that she “already has a lock on the pro-life, anti-big-government vote,” but “needs to address the concerns of voters who liked her initially but now feel she isn’t ready for high office. Some of them may be in the Tea Party — but certainly not all of them.”

Source: Yahoo.com

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