Beforehand, the Republican vice presidential candidate will appear at a 7:00 p.m. banquet and private reception. After her speech, she’ll hold a 30-minute session responding to questions from members of the audience.

I hope Palin enjoys her visit to greater Peoria and that those who could afford the $75 to $200 admission to the sold-out event will be entertained. After all, who can begrudge her wealth based on her speaking fees, book or duties at Fox News? Who can criticize her popularity with Tea Partiers and Sean Hannity fans? And who can oppose her nomination as the 2012 Republican standard bearer?

Well, that’d be other conservatives, some Republicans and even GOP allies.

The charismatic Palin, 45, who abruptly quit as Alaska’ governor in July, polarizes not just the country, but her party and her family, and some conservatives say she’s leading the charge for GOP to take over the Tea Party movement.

Of course, it’s not surprising that she irks some progressives and Democrats – which isn’t unhealthy. When Palin remarked that she hoped health-care reform would be “dead on arrival,” the Democratic Party’s Mitch Stewart pointed out the “lies” and “deception” by Palin, who made up the term “death panels.”

Stewart wrote, “Palin went on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, where she outrageously – and falsely – suggested that Americans would ‘face jail time as punishment’ if they don’t buy insurance.”

But when Palin publicly criticizes her running mate, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), or the father of her grandkid, 19-year-old Levi Johnston, Palin can come across as a vindictive scold. That may be why a recent poll found that 60% of Americans think Palin is unqualified to be president and her unfavorability rating is up to 52%.

And when Palin’s opinion of Israel’s settlement policy stems from a narrow interpretation of Revelations, even the Jewish Forward – which covers and advocates for Israel and Judaism – distanced itself from her version of a pro-Israel stance.

“We are left to wonder how [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s announcement of a 10-month settlement freeze fits into the dangerous worldview of someone who employs a radical reading of Scripture to formulate foreign policy,” the Jewish Forward editorialized.

Another conservative, Rod Dreher of Beliefnet.com, wrote, “All she offers are ‘right-wing buzzwords,’ a set of self-contradictory, populist notions (Wall Street and corporations, bad; capitalism, good), and her small-town persona.

“She is so far from being capable of being president of the United States,” he said, “it’s not even funny.”

She was amusing and charming – and a bit aloof — at the Tea Party convention in Nashville, where only about 600 people showed up. She tried to needle President Obama with remarks such as, “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for you?” and “This is bigger than a charismatic guy with a TelePrompter” (apparently not seeing the irony of making the statement the same week she used notes she wrote on her hand in an interview). However, when some of those assembled chanted, “Run, Sarah, Run!” Palin acknowledged their support but left with the Republican professionals who make up her entourage.

Compared to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 or the Mugwumps of 1884, the Tea Party started as a pretty independent effort. The Tea (“taxed enough already”) Party trend is traced to February 19, 2009, when former Drexel Burnhan Lambert exec Rick Santelli – who supported bailouts of Wall Street – loudly complained on CNBC about helping the auto industry, about “subsidizing the losers.” Using social-network sites, a grassroots, libertarian feelings arose. Then former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks organization grabbed the baton, sharing attempts to lead/control the Tea Party folks with a sister group, Americans for Prosperity. Add partisan Fox News, Dodo bird Glenn Beck and his ilk, funding from Republican fronts such as Our Country Deserves Better political action committee.

Some see Tea-bagger types as shock troops assaulting the government that most Americans voted for in 2008, but Americans like Tea Party folks more than Republicans, according to Rasmussen and ABC polls.

That’s too tempting to the GOP, and at the Nashville TP gathering, Palin suggested, “The GOP would be smart to absorb the Tea Party movement.”

Uh-oh.

“It’s a leaderless coalition of conservative activists who for all their revolutionary vim look less likely to take over the GOP than to be taken over by it,” writes conservative Michael Brendan Dougherty in The American Conservative magazine. “The reins were swiftly seized by Republican hacks and opportunists. Less Ron Paul, more Sarah Palin.”

Indeed, the upfront libertarian Paul is the Republican Congressman from Texas who ran for president during 2008’s primaries. A Founding Father of the Tea Party, or at least a Dutch uncle, Paul now faces three primary challengers in his re-election race: all loyal to the Tea Party, they say.

In South Carolina, the state Republican Party took over the Palmetto State Tea Party, and there’s growing resentment at the Republican Party.

“What I am witnessing is an attempted defilement of the concept of what the Tea Party’s purposes are and where we are going to be,” said TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson. “The bastardization of our message I find bilious and disingenuous on its face.”

Robertson says he fears that Tea Partiers are being seduced by GOP operatives.

“Has our message become so contaminated and ineffective as to be mistaken for the same old political clap-trap vomited from the Kool-Aid drinking mouths of the Republican elite?” he asked.

Conservative Dougherty says the GOP is playing Big Brothers to what it sees as an unruly sibling.

“Despite the real idealism of some of its activists both inside and outside the Beltway, the Tea Party is nothing more than a Republican-managed tantrum,” Dougherty writes in The American Conservative. “Send the conservative activists into the streets to vent their anger. Let Obama feel the brunt of it. And if the GOP shows a modicum of contrition, the runaways will come home.”

The first speaker in Five Points’ “Lessons from Leaders” series, Palin may mouth Tea Party slogans, or try to recruit people to the GOP, or both.

She could even pull the Rapture card.

Follow her, or risk being… “Left behind.”

Have fun.

Bill Knight is an award-winning Peoria journalist who teaches at Western Illinois University. Contact him at bill.knight@hotmail.com.