Palin, recharged after last week's debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is animating the party's conservative wing with harsh attacks against Obama. She's courting high-dollar donors for campaign cash. And she is looking to wrestle away women and independent voters from the Democrats.

"The heels are on, the gloves are off," she declares, a threat delivered with a smile.

With that message, the campaign is sending her on a whirlwind tour of political trouble spots.

On Sunday, she was headed for a rally in Omaha, Neb., a defensive move in one of the two states in the nation that can split their electoral votes. Her visit illustrated the depth of worry within the McCain camp. Since 1964, all five of the state's electoral votes have gone to the Republican presidential candidate.

On Monday, she begins a two-day, event-packed tour of Florida that stretches from Naples in the South to Pensacola in the panhandle. North Carolina and Pennsylvania are next.

After a hold-your-ground debate performance last week, Palin is back to where she was after her show-stopping speech at the Republican convention a month ago -- the top draw in the McCain-Palin ticket.

About 10,000 people came to her rally Saturday in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson. She raised $2 million in one California fundraiser for the McCain-Palin Victory 2008 fund. She's getting the star treatment from the likes of Grammy winner Vikki Carr and actor Robert Duvall.

She's still the carefully handled national politics greenhorn. Reporters traveling on her plane are kept at a distance. At fundraising events she doesn't take questions in public from donors, as McCain does. Contributors greet her privately before she allows the press in for her stump speech.

She brushes off some of her criticism as if it were lint on her jacket.

"People say that I speak too simply, or don't have quite the -- I don't have my thesaurus in my back pocket all along through my speeches," she told donors in Englewood, Col. "Well, I don't have time for that."

On Sunday she told donors she had been asked why she had done so poorly in interviews with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. "You know what I should have said?" she joked. "It's job security for Tina Fey" -- the woman who impersonates her on "Saturday Night Live."

(Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies October 6, 2008)