Sarah Palin, motivator-in-chief

Sarah Palin strode out on stage at CPAC carrying a red leather briefcase and off to work she went, firing a years worth of sarcastic Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. one-liners at Professor Obama.

He promised to transform America and thats one promise hes kept; he transformed a shining city on a hill into a sinking ship.

This government isnt too big to fail; its too big to succeed.

Hope and change? Yeah, you gotta hope things change.

After a year or two [in Obamas Washington, lawmakers] decide its not really a cesspool. More like a hot tub.

The last thing you need is a community organizer reorganizing the deck chairs [on the Titanic] while singing, Lets Stay Together.

My personal favorite had to have been her Scarlett OHara moment: So help me God, she said, a world in which Americans are over-taxed is not a future well ever accept.

Or maybe it was when she said Washington, D.C. is a city so Roman in its moral decay that they even have a Lamborghini dealership, not that theres anything wrong with hot wheels. (I think she might mean the one in Sterling, V! irginia, not that Ive ever been there.)

A few of these crowd-pleasers were recycled from her 08 vice presidential run; she repeatedly referred to Obama as a community organizer the conservative equivalent of a hedge-funder and got a big laugh with her old line referring to Obamas plan for winning the future as WTF.

Still, by the time she rehashed Obamas biggest unforced error in 08, the crowd was cheering so hard it was impossible to hear what she said after this: The president says small Americans small-town Americans bitterly cling to our God and our guns. We say keep your change, and well keep our God and our guns!

This time next year, she vowed in closing, we will have a commander-in-chief worthy of our troops!

Whoop-inducing as all this was, it flat-out depressed some in the crowd.

Why? Because that was the speech that could unify the Republican Party, said Iowan Craig Bergman. If we picked our candidate with the applause-o-meter, wed have our nominee in the former Alaska governor. I think the Republicans are not going to win because shes not running.

After Palin closed the annual event, Bergman and a few friends were discussing how Mitt Romney, self-described severely conservative governor of Massachusetts who didnt sound like he thought that was a good thing -- could possibly have won the straw poll. (Mormon infiltrators, posited one man, who seemed to be only half-kidding.)

Others at CPAC described Palin as a pivotal figure, but inferred that she belongs to history now, like Paul Revere:

People still respect the groundwork she laid, said Jackie Walorski, who in 10 narrowly lost her Congressional race with Joe Donnelly in the Indiana swing-district that includes South Bend. She is running for the seat again this year. I respect her because shes a woman who got out there on the national stage and took on the media no offense and made it easier for people like me to run.

But no matter how many political obits are written for Sarah Palin, millionaire and motivator-in-chief, the most faithful of the faithful continue to say theyd follow her anywhere. She sets the tone for the party, said Erica Windham, from Auburn, Alabama, and the others copy everything she does.

Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors She the People. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.