Sarah Palin will emerge from the ashes of John McCain's campaign as a potential leader for the Republican Party in America.

"I'm not doing this for naught," she told ABC News as the 2008 election entered its final week.

Despite her much-mocked candidacy, she will be seen as one of the party's leaders going forward and a potential presidential candidate for 2012 who could become the first woman to hold the Oval Office.

Drawing much larger crowds than Mr McCain on the campaign trail, the 44-year-old mother-of-five has been a polarising figure and will be central to any post-mortem examination of Mr McCain's second White House bid.

She invigorated the party's Christian conservative base, a key voting bloc Mr McCain struggled to tame, and was hailed as a bold "breath of fresh air" for the Republicans, frequently drawing more than 10,000 people at rallies across the country.

Her folksy charm and straight-talking appealed to many Republicans but she will also be criticised as a risky, inexperienced diva who cost them the presidency.

Even McCain campaign insiders privately turned on her in recent days, describing her of acting "like a diva" and of being a "whack job" after she contradicted the campaign's official stance in public.

Mrs Palin spoke out about how the Republicans spent 150,000 dollars on her wardrobe when the campaign wanted her to let it lie; she criticised the campaign's use of automated phone calls; and she told reporters the McCain campaign was not "giving up" on Michigan even as it withdrew resources from the state.

The aides said she was more interested in "positioning herself for her own future" than in winning today.

The US website Politico.com also reported she feared McCain campaign aides were "going to try and shred her" after the election.

Asked about her future aspirations, she said: "I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that would bring this whole..."

She stopped herself before adding: "I'm not doing this for naught."

Politico.com also reported she blamed Mr McCain's aides for arranging her initial TV interviews, her high-profile introduction to the national stage, which were widely seen as disastrous.

It was in these interviews that she could not describe the Bush doctrine in foreign affairs - the six-year-old US policy of military pre-emption - seemed to have little grasp of the proposed financial industry bail-out, and even appeared to endorse Barack Obama's position on chasing al Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, a policy criticised by Mr McCain.

At one point, she suggested she was unsure what was involved in the vice president's role and struggled to name which papers she read, eventually saying: "All of them, any of them that have been in front of me."

Mrs Palin's answers became punchlines for comedians, in particular when she cited Alaska's proximity to Russia when asked about her foreign policy experience, and a mocking impersonation by Tina Fey on the comedy show Saturday Night Live became a television and YouTube sensation.

Conservative commentator Kathleen Parker said her "cringe reflex" was "exhausted" and it was clear Mrs Palin was "out of her league" and should pull out of the race.

As the internal campaign grievances became public, Mr McCain repeatedly told reporters he was "so proud" of her and declared on the campaign trail: "When two mavericks join up, we don't agree on everything, but that's a lot of fun."

Her campaign was also distracted by its involvement with the Troopergate inquiry, which looked into the dismissal of Alaska's public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, who allegedly refused to fire Mrs Palin's brother-in-law Mike Wooten, an Alaskan state trooper, following a messy divorce from her sister.

She was only cleared by the Alaska personnel board on the eve of the election.

But the self-styled "hockey mum" appealed to a great swathe of Republican states and electrified the crowd at the party's national convention, receiving a roaring ovation as she portrayed herself as a pitbull with lipstick.

Several campaign officials in southern states credit her with boosting their popularity and motivating supporters, not least because she is a pro-life devout Christian, a fiscal and social conservative, and holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association.

And she is a woman who has stayed true to these beliefs.

On April 18, Mrs Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down's syndrome, after she refused to let the results of antenatal genetic testing change her decision to have a baby.

It also emerged that her unwed 17-year-old daughter Bristol was pregnant, but Mrs Palin announced Bristol and her boyfriend Levi Johnston were planning to have the baby and a wedding was being planned.

A former Miss Alaska runner-up, she also hunts, eats moose burgers, ice fishes, and rides snowmobiles.

Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, on February 11, 1964, Mrs Palin moved to Alaska with her family as an infant and earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for the intensity of her play as captain for the Wasilla High School Warriors basketball team in Wasilla, Alaska.

Her husband, Todd, the so-called "First Dude" of Alaska, is a Native Yup'ik Eskimo who works for BP outside the fishing season and is also a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2,000-mile "Iron Dog" race four times.

The couple, who have been married for more than 20 years, eloped after she finished college and reportedly recruited two residents from a nearby elderly care home when the pair realised they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony.

Their eldest son, Track, 18 at the time, joined the US Army on September 11 last year and is serving in Iraq and they also have three daughters - Bristol, Willow, 13, and Piper, seven.