Count me among the Iowans who didn’t care about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s speech to yesterday’s tea party rally in Indianola. She doesn’t appear to be running for president this cycle, having laid no groundwork for a successful campaign. She wasn’t likely to have anything new to say about public policy.

I figured Palin would eventually endorse Texas Governor Rick Perry, who seems similar in style and ideology. Some of her sound bites from Indianola made me rethink that assumption.

Palin didn’t break new ground on the policy front. Find me any Republican, anywhere, who’s not for cutting taxes and spending, repealing “Obamacare,” limiting regulations on business and drilling for more domestic oil. The only proposal that was slightly different was Palin’s call to eliminate the corporate income tax rather than just reduce it. She probably is not aware that plenty of major companies already pay nothing in corporate income taxes. CORRECTION: Bleeding Heartland user xjcsa notes that Palin wants to eliminate the corporate income tax in part to level the playing field, so that big businesses aren’t able to evade the taxes paid by smaller businesses.

Palin’s prescriptions would inflate rather than shrink the federal deficit, but the same could be said for every other Republican’s plan. Anyway, the tea party audience of about 2,000 didn’t show up to hear a policy treatise. The wanted an exciting pep talk, and they got one. IowaPolitics.com posted the audio from the rally for those who want to listen.

Palin urged people to vet a candidate’s record and ability to reform and fix problems. She accused Obama of “pay-to-play,” saying that donors to his campaign got nice returns on their investment with billions of dollars in federal stimulus money.

But Obama wasn’t her only target. She also took aim at other 2012 Republican candidates for president.

“Now to be fair, some GOP candidates also raise mammoth amounts of cash, and we need to ask them, too, what, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their investments?” she asked. “We need to know this because our country can’t afford more trillion-dollar thank-you notes to campaign backers.”

The only people Palin could be talking about are Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Everyone else’s fundraising has been underwhelming so far. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Perry’s first FEC filing shows more money raised than all the other GOP presidential candidates combined. Super-PACs supporting Perry and Romney are collecting millions of dollars as well.

The Indianola crowd warmly received Palin’s attacks on “crony capitalism,” but if she comes around to backing Perry, she’ll have some explaining to do. Perry’s economic development programs have been tainted by pay-to-play tactics for years (see here, here and here). Major Perry donors have received appointments and other political favors. Outside of the former Soviet Union, I’m hard-pressed to think of anyplace more “crony capitalist” than Texas.

At the Indianola balloon field, Palin boasted about taking on “a corrupt and compromised political class and their backward dealings with Big Oil” as governor of Alaska. If Perry ever supported anything Big Oil was against, I’m not aware of it.

CNN’s Peter Hamby reported,

Palin allies had hinted to reporters before the speech that she would draw a stark contrast between her record and that of Perry, an impressive fund-raiser who has long been criticized by political foes of rewarding his campaign donors and political allies with government contracts and posts.

As I mentioned above, I had assumed that Palin would give Perry’s candidacy a boost during the primaries. They are said to get along well, whereas Palin is not close to the other tea party favorites in the Republican field (Representatives Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul). Perry praised Palin at a press conference shortly after the November 2008 election. Palin endorsed Perry over U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s 2010 GOP primary challenger. Last month Palin even defended Perry’s ridiculous comments about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s “almost treasonous” policies.

I still doubt Palin will run for president this year. Multiple polls show that most Republicans don’t want her to run for president. It’s too late to put together a competent organization in the early voting states. Why give up a big contract with Fox News to run a losing campaign?

If Palin’s game plan is to endorse Perry, though, I am stumped as to why she would make such a high-profile statement against “crony capitalism” this weekend.

Spin your own scenarios about the GOP presidential race in this thread.

UPDATE: Gotta say, this is impressive. Palin ran in a half-marathon in Storm Lake on Sunday and finished second in the women’s 40-49 division with a time of 1:46:10. She registered under her maiden name, Sarah Heath, to avoid publicity before the event.

SECOND UPDATE: Beltway journalist favorite presidential candidate Jon Huntsman went on the offensive Sunday against Palin’s tax proposal:

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Huntsman described Palin’s call Saturday for no federal corporate income taxes “a great political bromide” unhinged from basic budget math. […]

Huntsman’s own plan would eliminate all tax subsidies for corporations and individuals and shrink the current six-rate personal income tax bracket with a three-rate bracket with rates of 8 percent, 14 percent, and 23 percent. The current structure contains rates of 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, and 35 percent. Huntsman also wants to reduce the current federal corporate income tax rate from 34 percent to 20 percent.

Huntsman said his plan would be “revenue neutral” and would raise revenue to offset the losses linked to lower personal income tax rates by eliminating such popular tax breaks as deductions for interest on home mortgages, veterans’ and Social Security benefits, and state and local income taxes.

“I know it’s going to be politically controversial, but I think it is absolutely needed at this point,” Huntsman said. “Everybody would like to go down to zero in terms of corporate taxes. I know how difficult it is to make the numbers work. You’ve got to find the revenue somewhere that you can reinvest in the tax code to bring down the rate for everybody. Ours is based on the real world and where we can make the numbers actually work.”