Tea Party and Sarah Palin supporters braved the rain to attend the Tea Party’s Restoring America event. The former Alaskan governor spoke for 40 minutes amid much fanfare and expectations.

“I would like to see her run,” said Matt Warmann, a merchandiser at the rally. Warmann drove up from St. Louis, MO, with his business partner in order to sell their political buttons and hear Palin speak.

Palin was the headline of the event. Leading up to her speech, followers of the politician voiced their anticipation for a 2012 campaign announcement and chanted ‘Run, Sarah Run’ during her speech. People all over Iowa and the nation came to the rally and cheered on speakers praising the Tea Party and Palin’s policies.

“I hope Sarah Palin gets in the race because she’s the only person I’ve seen since Reagan that I trust,” said Ron Gahlberg of Pleasant Prairie, WI. “Reagan was a conservative. When he said he was going to do something, he did it. Sarah is going to do the same thing.”

“The Tea Party has quite literally changed the culture of the United States of America,” said radio talk show host Tony Katz.

The Tea Party also brought in a ‘lighter’ side of politics when political comedian Eric Golub took the stand and thanked rally attendees for the “honor to be among flag waving, Bible thumping, gun toting, Palin appreciating people”.

“Sarah is so pro-life that she would bring a child into the world even if modern medicine proved it would be as ideologically flawed as Nancy Pelosi,” Golub joked to the crowd.

After tunes from Krista Branch and Steve Vaus, Sarah Palin took the stage. She spent her speech discussing President Obama, the Tea Party, “Corporate Crony Capitalism,” and the future of America.

“The only future President Obama is trying to save is his own reelection. He has shown that he is perfectly willing to mortgage our children’s futures in order to pay for it. And there is proof of this. Just look closely at where all that green energy stimulus money is invested,” Palin said. “That hope-y change-y stuff that was put in an individual back when Barack Obama was a candidate, that hope-y change-y stuff didn’t create one job in August.”

Palin laid out her plan to get Americans back into the workforce.

“My plan is a working man’s plan…We must talk about what really works in order to bring America back to work. My plan is about empowerment. Empowerment of our states, empowerment of our entrepreneurs and most importantly empowerment of you,” Palin said.

Despite chants of “Run, Sarah, Run”, Palin closed her speech without concrete promises as to whether or not she would be running for the 2012 presidency.