Palin was the big star at the Tea Party gathering, but is she The One?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Under an ornate brass chandelier, Sarah Palin looked out into the swank hotel ballroom and a legion of double-breasted and leopard-topped fans - some who'd paid $349 for the 55-minute privilege - surrounded by plates of half-eaten chocolate mousse, and made a declaration:

"I think America is ready for another revolution . . . "

Palin then rebooted her improbable climb from the foothills of Wasilla to the slippery mountaintop of American politics on a speech here to the National Tea Party Convention on Saturday night. She told the well-coiffed vanguard of an anti-big-government insurgency what it wanted to hear - "This is about the people, and it's bigger than any one king or queen of a tea party" - and then she bolted from the room with 8-year-old daughter Piper to echoing chants of what she wanted to hear: "Run, Sarah, run!"

But, then, Palin's bid to harness the power of the rising right-wing movement while simultaneously hailing its aversion to charismatic leaders was just one obvious paradox in a weekend that was chock full of them. The Tea Party movement that started less than a year ago with conservative resentment over President Obama's ascension and his agenda is now balancing success stories - its role in helping Sen. Scott Brown's Massachusetts miracle - with sharp growing pangs. Activists were torn over boosting the GOP or bashing it, and whether it's really a revolution when it's funded - at least here at theme-park-y Opryland Hotel - with Platinum Visa cards.

No one heightened the contradictions more than the keynote speaker, whose reported $100,000 speaking fee came out of those high-priced tickets, including $549 for the whole confab - luxury hotel and airfare not included. Her speech, larded with her hallmark high-school-pep-rally snark, sounded at times like someone had hit the "pause" button on the 2008 campaign - absent the news that Obama had defeated her ticket-mate John McCain with 53 percent of the vote.