Sarah Palin Rips Obama, GOP Rivals

A little bad weather never put off the Sarah Palin faithful, and so it was Saturday in Indianola, Iowa, as a boisterous crowd of about 2,000 braved driving rain and a muddy field at a tea party rally to hear Palin attack "crony capitalism" and the "permanent political class" that reinforced it. It's destroying the U.S., she said.

Mainly she attacked Obama. "Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit in half. Instead he turned around and tripled it," Palin said. "Barack Obama is adrift. He doesn't make sense."

She was further quoted in a Sunday story in the British newspaper The Guardian: "Who wants to win the future by investing in harebrained ideas [like] solar panels and really fast trains?" The ideas were "nonstarters," she said. "All aboard Obama's bullet train to bankruptcy."

But she also made digs at her potential Republican rivals. Obama was set to raise a billion dollars for his re-election campaign, she said, but Republican candidates "also raise mammoth amounts of cash".

"We need to ask them too, what, if anything, do their donors expect from their investments," Palin said. "Our country can't afford more trillion-dollar thank-you notes to campaign backers."

Rick Perry, front-runner in the Republican race, has been accused of using his position to help his donors. "There is a name for this," Palin said. "It's called corporate crony capitalism. It's not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts and influence peddling and corporate welfare."

The former Alaska governor stopped short of answering the big question about the purpose of her bus tour of key election states: Is it a run at the White House or an increase in book sales she's looking for?

On Labor Day Palin will speak in Manchester, N.H., the state with the first primary for presidential candidates. Palin has said she will announce by the end of this month whether she will join the race for the White House in 2012.
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