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Tuscon, Arizona

"Do you love your freedom, Arizona ?" Sarah Palin cries, hitting the high register. The portion of Arizona cramed into Pima County Fairgrounds tells Sarah Palin that they do. She is doing her bit for the man who has done so much for her.

Veteran senator, tortured war hero former presidential candidate he may be but John McCain is in a spot of bother in Arizona. Like many sitting Republican senators, he's being challenged for his own seat by those who think he's not conservative enough, on the economy, on immigration in particular.

So what better way to hit back than bring on your old pal, who just happens to be the heartthrob of the conservative Tea Party movement? Sarah Palin fell out with the McCain camp during the presidential election, and they despaired of her occasional catatonia and failure to grasp basic policy. But if the senator has ever breathed a bad word about her it wasn't in front of leaky advisors who've told journalists so much.

So she does her stuff. She not so much hits the red button issues as stomps on them in her platform heels. She praises the troops. "Anyone who has served this great country raise your hand - we are going to honour you. Thank you! We love you!" She sneers at health care, attacks the media.

She makes it clear she and the maverick are cut from the same anti-Washington cloth.

"It's a beautiful grass movement putting government back on the side of people. Let me clear the air right now everybody here supporting John Mcain we are all part of that tea party movement. We are all that tea party movement."

Words mean what Sarah Palin wants them to mean. But what do the rest of the Tea Party movement make of this?

Outside the wire fence around the fairgrounds four women are there to support an alternative, more right-wing, candidate.

A couple of hours drive up the valley at the San Tan Flat Steak House country music plays, as the local Tea Party movement begin their regular meeting with the oath of allegiance.

"Then a prayer Father, we come before you amazed that people across our country are binding together and raising their voices in preservation of this great republic."

Palin's support for McCain disappoints them. The founder Jason Mow says that Palin should remain true to her roots and beliefs and then she would win a presidential election with a landslide, because that's what the country is crying out for.

Sara Palin is a brand. A super star. When she chucked in her job as governor of Alaska she started making millions out of her autobiography, speeches and now an eight-part series on Alaska. Some think she'll end up in Hollywood, not Washington.

The conventional wisdom is that she will opt for celebrity not politics and that she is too devisive to be a presidential candidate. That's not the view of a man in an Obummer T-shirt says: "I think she's a fox. A drop dead fox." He says it is time for a woman to be president.

A woman says, "she's just like me" and wants her to run.

But a Vietnam veteran, an ageing angel perched on his harly Davidson, admires her toughness but says she's doing more now than when she had an offical job.

Perhaps the conventional wisdom is right. But Palin is the Republican party's only charismatic figure and by doing gigs like this she is keeping on the right side of the party hierarchy. In America, fame and fortune never hurt if you are really after power.

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