Palin "We really do love our trees, I named my daughter Willow. Isn't that granola enough for them?"

The country music blared, the crowd was already on its feet cheering, the gigantic American flag was draped across the back of the stage, and red-jacketed, black high-heeled Sarah Palin strode on to the stage to thunderous applause. This was not a VP campaign stop in 2008. This happened yesterday in California, and it was Sarah Palin’s first speech after telling Chris Wallace on Sunday that it would be “absurd” for her not to consider a 2012 presidential run. This was her first campaign speech for the presidential primary.

Palin’s appearance was hosted by the Sierra Cascade Logging Conference, and the Redding Convention Center was sold out. 2000 tickets that ranged in price from $50 to $75 a piece were gone in less than an hour. Another appearance was hastily added for a few hours later. She is rumored to have pocketed $150,000 today.

Her mission was clear – generate grass roots support, and reforge her narrative for the presidential challenge ahead. Gone were the snarky swipes at Obama, gone was the “mean girl” rhetoric, gone was terror talk. She hammered home a populist message, punctuated with tales of her own accomplishments when she held elected office in Alaska - tales spun from the revisionist history found in her best-selling book, Going Rogue.

Free-market principles, and limited regulation were touted. Big banks and big government were in the cross-hairs. Environmentalists were the enemy-du-jour. Palin was back in the “Real America” and the logging crowd was on its feet.

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“When a tree falls in the forest, and there’s nobody around to hear it….”

“what happens to environmental lawsuits?”

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