Before things erupted at the August 8 Republican Party picnic in Kincaid Park, in Anchorage; before large and visibly upset Republican Party lawyer Bill Large told Sarah Palin sign-wavers in front of the park chalet to disband; before Large got into a little jostling match with Bev Perdew, a 69-year-old Palin volunteer, and Perdew speared Large with a Palin sign that said "Take A Stand"; and before Large called Palin's supporters "Brown Shirts" and, when that failed to get a rise, "communists" - before all that, Palin, who is running for governor and is in a three-way race for the Republican nomination in the August 22 primary, already looked like she was having a hell of a good time.

And with good reason.

Palin that day already had spoken about rural issues to a group of about 20 smitten women at Traditions Restaurant, in Midtown Anchorage. She also was the apparent winner in the big KTUU Channel 2 debate with the other Republican primary contenders, Governor Frank Murkowski and Fairbanks businessman John Binkley, and she'd held a successful fundraiser at a Mountain View business. Then, at the picnic, her supporters came out in force, swamping the old-boy Republicans with her signs and red T-shirts, reminding them that she was taking a stand against them - and that it was working.

That day, surrounded by her folks, the kind of people that State Senator Ben Stevens - an old-boy AK pol if ever there was one - once memorably derided as "Valley trash," the people who hold Palin signs high and chant "Sa-rah, Sa-rah" and sculpt funny Palin hats and adorn their cars and bicycles with Palin bumper stickers, and who vote, the 42-year-old Palin was already feeling a win coming on.

Then Large flew off the handle, leaving some Palin supporters shaking with anger that Large, the "machine" lawyer, supposedly shoved an elderly Palin volunteer, and called all of them "communists," and tried to deprive them of their God-given right to wave their signs and take a stand - which, come to think of it, is what their forefathers had died for, and what their boys right now were fighting for, under a blazing sun, in some God-forsaken desert, thousands of miles from this beautiful country, ready to die so others could peaceably assemble.

After Large stomped off, Palin's 15-year-old daughter, Bristol, who has her mother's eyes but not yet the savvy to let a homerun speak for itself, said, "What a psycho."

Really, it's not so much that Large or Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich or Frank Murkowski or John Binkley is crazy, but rather that Palin's surging, come-from-nowhere candidacy is making them crazy. If the polls are right, last week it looked as though Palin was also the favorite to be the state's next governor, and its first woman in that office.

At the picnic, Palin tended to her supporters with their funny hats and not-so-straight teeth, commiserating when they spoke of the injustice Large visited upon them and how it was just more proof of Republican old-guard malfeasance, and of their commitment to stick by her, and how they'd redouble their efforts to fight for her and against those bad men, the corrupt Alaska Republicans, the people who had taken over the party of Lincoln. Then Palin walked back into the chalet, where she ran into Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman. Palin ran against Leman for that office in 2002 and lost, but Leman has not exactly been in the mainstream of the party either, so they had that in common.

"Sarah," Leman said as he stood beside Palin in the chalet, surveying the crowd, "look at them all. It's the same people. The same old people who were here last year, and the year before and the year before."