Palin's Speech Seen as Hit on Perry 'Career Politician'

A crowd of 2,000 in Indianola, Iowa, braved torrential rain to hear former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blast “corporate crony capitalism” and the “permanent political class” in her speech to the Tea Party of America.

It was no mystery that the barbs were aimed at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate who has spent most of his career in office and who is perennially dogged by charges of rewarding his financial supporters.

Perry is considered the latest frontrunner for the GOP nomination.

“You know that it’s not enough to just change up the uniform,” Palin shouted out. “If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country.”

Recently, Palin aides have been debunking rumors that she was ready to climb on Perry’s rumbling bandwagon and endorse him. In Indianola, she hammered home her camp’s message, telling the crowd that it was not good enough to replace Obama with any business-as-usual Republican administration.

“You must vet a candidate’s record,” Palin said. “You must know their ability to successfully reform and actually fix problems that they are going to claim that they inherited.”

Even as she got into the meat of her own proposals for creating jobs, including the elimination of all federal corporate income taxes, she seemed to take a sideswipe at Perry, demanding that the cozy relationship between political contributions and government favors must be brought to light and eliminated.

Later on the rope line while signing T-shirts and hats and smiling at chants from the crowd to “Run, Sarah, run,” Palin said, “We need to make sure all our GOP candidates are fighting corporate capitalism and aren’t participating in it. We have a great opportunity to finally knock it down.”

Steadfast, Palin would not answer shouted questions as to whether she was directing her remarks at Perry.

“I want all of our GOP candidates to take the opportunity to kill corporate capitalism that is leading to this cronyism that is killing our economy,” Palin retorted at one point. “They all have an opportunity to speak out against it. That’s what I want them to do.”

One recent poll concluded that 74 percent of voters think Palin should not run, while 71 percent of GOP voters think the same, but the stalwart Palin was having none of it when confronted with the numbers.

"Polls? Nah . . . They’re for strippers and cross country skiers," Palin shot back.

Next on the Palin agenda: taking her “One Nation Bus Tour” on to New Hampshire, the venue of the kick-off presidential primary election.