WASHINGTON, Pa. -- Sarah Palin's first trip to western Pennsylvania was under Sen. John McCain's wing, just days after her national debut at the 2008 Republican convention as the fresh-faced running mate who, the GOP presidential candidate warned locals, "doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down."
Palin returned on her own Saturday to Washington, Pa., as a "Commonsense Conservative," a definition crafted on her own terms and in her own words in her own best-selling memoir, "Going Rogue."
"It's grass-roots America, it's common sense," said Joy Koplinski, 62, a retiree from Pittsburgh who waited overnight in the parking lot of a Sam's Club warehouse store for Palin to autograph a copy of the book. "She's the female Ronald Reagan."
In the first few days of a cross-country book tour to promote her memoir, the former Alaska governor's supporters have greeted her with a populist fervor unmatched in Internet-age Republican politics. From her first stop last week in Grand Rapids, Mich., to Saturday's lunchtime book-signing event at the Washington Sam's Club, thousands of people have lined up for hours, often in the cold, for a few moments in Palin's presence.
Since stepping down this summer as Alaska governor, Palin has ducked questions about her future plans. But with the campaign-style bus and the adoring crowds reminiscent of her vice presidential bid, her swing through red zones of states -- Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- certainly has the appearance of something grander than a book tour.
And though it's too early to call it a campaign, Palin's brand of common-sense conservatism crackles with the energy of a burgeoning political movement.
In "The Way Forward," the title of the final chapter of her memoir, she describes herself and her political philosophy as based on common-sense principles she believes were last espoused by her political idol, Ronald Reagan. The role of government, Palin writes, "is not to perfect us, but to protect us."
Some, like Doug McKinnis, see Palin's political philosophy as a stand against what he describes as "government control, dependence on the government and loss of liberty."
McKinnis, a 48-year-old commercial pilot from Palin's hometown, Wasilla, was visiting his mother in Pennsylvania when he learned Palin was signing books. He dropped by the Sam's Club with his "Alaskans Love Sarah" sign.
"The way I see things going in our country, there are two lines," McKinnis said. The line he waited in outside the Palin event represents "liberty, freedom, independence and a constitutional government." The other line is just the opposite, McKinnis said. "I want to be in the line of freedom, and I think Sarah Palin is a voice for freedom."
Palin appears to have tapped into a powerful strain of populism fueled on the right by dissatisfaction with the economy and fear that the party running the country is made up of elites who aren't listening, said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Iowa, where he's seen his share of politicians testing out political theories on the state's influential caucus voters.
"A populist is against big, period," Goldford said. "The populist basically says, 'Look, big labor, big business, big government, they're all trying to screw me, the little guy.' That populism that she's tapped into, it's partly a politics of resentment. She's very much somebody who bristles with all sorts of resentments."
The common-sense conservatism phrase adopted by Palin in her book has actually been around for a while, said Greg Mueller, a conservative strategist and veteran of Republican presidential campaigns. But Palin seems to have seized on something timely by putting her brand on common-sense conservatism, he said.
"If Palin is using it," Mueller said, "there's a very good chance it's going to have resonance in certain communities."
Those communities include a vast network connected online and unified by the Tea Party protests of the summer, as well as those individuals who have taken up their cause, Fox News talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in particular.
If Palin wanted, she could lead that movement, said sisters Leann Marcolini, 51, and Amy Jo Brown, 39, both of Fredericktown, Pa.
"Her no-nonsense, we're-not-going-to-take-it-anymore attitude is what inspired the Tea Party movement," said Brown, a schoolteacher. "She talks the talk and walks the walk."
In western Pennsylvania, there's a deep distrust of the power of federal government, both sisters said, dating to efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up coal mining practices in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They fear a repeat of those times if Congress passes cap-and-trade legislation to curb greenhouse gases.
"This area's been hit hard by liberal policies," Brown said, and if cap-and-trade moves forward, "it's going to hit these industries again," Marcolini said.
Palin, Marcolini said, speaks for the people who "our elitist government is not bothering to listen to." "You have to have common sense," she said.
During the campaign, Palin returned repeatedly to western Pennsylvania, partly in the hopes that the same independent-minded Democrats who elected Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary and wanted to see a woman closer to the White House would choose the McCain-Palin ticket. The campaign lost the state, although it eked out a narrow victory in the congressional district Palin visited Saturday.
A year after the election and deeper into an economic downturn, though, Palin's common-sense conservatism struck a nerve among the people waiting overnight for her autograph on their books.
Steven Zerbini, a 19-year-old college student and National Guardsman from Greensburg, Pa., came up with his own definition of it.
"It's not bringing in a terrorist to civilian courts in New York City," Zerbini said, referring to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "It's not raising taxes in a recession."
"Don't spend what you don't have," added Jim Baney, 38, who befriended Zerbini when the two were the first to queue up outside the Sam's Club more than 18 hours before Palin was due to arrive.
"I'd call it down to earth, it's what she's campaigning about," said Letitia Shavinsky-Jeram, 55, before she was reminded that Palin was, in fact, not running for anything. She amended her statement. "I'm praying she's campaigning," Shavinsky-Jeram said. "I hope she is, because I'm there for her. She can see where this country needs to go."
Palin might as well be campaigning, said Kathy Martin-Nomura, 59, a corporate trainer from Hagerstown, Md. It's Palin herself, she said, and not her book that inspired her and others to spend the night on beach chairs, shivering under sleeping bags to ward off the 45-degree chill.
"That's just an excuse," Martin-Nomura said of the memoir. "We're here because of her ideology."
Palin also has any future vote of Bernadette Gariglio of Cherry Valley, Pa. She and her husband voted for Palin in 2008 -- in spite of John McCain, Gariglio noted.
"And we will vote for her again," she said.
It remains to be seen whether there's a future in what Goldford called "the politics of resentment." A recent CNN poll found that 7 in 10 people don't believe Palin is qualified to be president, he pointed out. But there's a coalescing movement out there, he said, and it's a powerful force if Palin can harness it.
"Angry people turn out to vote," he said. "People who aren't angry don't turn out to vote as much. In the American political system, small groups of intensely motivated and angry people often gain a victory over a larger group that's less intensely motivated and not angry."
Find Erika Bolstad online at adn.com/contact/ebolstad or call her in Washington, D.C., at 202-383-6104.
By ERIKA BOLSTAD
ebolstad@adn.com