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Sarah Palin is turning down a Tea Party request to seek the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

"I respect the desire to have someone in charge of the RNC who understands the wishes of the conservative grassroots and understands that power resides with the people and not the vested interests in D.C.," Palin said in a statement provided to CNN. "However, the primary role of the RNC chair seems be that of fundraiser-in-chief, and there are others who would probably be much more comfortable asking people for money than I would be, and they would definitely enjoy it more."

Palin was asked to serve as chairman in a letter from the group Tea Party Nation, which sponsored a national Tea Party Convention last February. She was the headline speaker at that event.

Despite sporadic online chatter about drafting her for the job, the prospect of Palin serving as RNC chairman - with its day-to-day rigors of managing the committee's 168 members - was never a workable one.

Though Palin has raised millions for her political action committee, most of it has come in through small donations via the internet. The job of the RNC's next chairman, meanwhile, will be to spend countless hours on the phone raising money from the kind of high-dollar donors who stopped giving to the committee under the leadership of Michael Steele.

RNC members looking for a Steele replacement are also hungry for an experienced committee insider, someone who understands the party organization's inner-workings. And of course, Palin relishes her unconventional role as an outspoken conservative firebrand and is seriously considering a 2012 White House bid.

Palin assisted Steele and the RNC in the closing months of the last election cycle, lending her name to RNC fundraising mailers and appearing at two fundraisers in California and Florida.

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