Sarah Palin: Deviant brilliance

Somebody clearly trained Sarah Palin to stop saying nook-ya-ler since Friday.

The tone of the coverage about her has changed overnight since her speech - even on the BBC this morning, I'd say there's about 90% less skepticism about her candidacy. And as for any illusions about Palin dropping out, I'd say you can kiss them goodbye. She's not going anywhere. Most of the lefty coverage focuses on the GOP giving up on issues altogether and turning this into 2004 again. It may work, and it may not, but barring some kind of smoking gun evidence that she committed a crime or had an abortion, McCain is going to stick with her. And why shouldn't he? She might be his most formidable weapon. McCain's threshold for VP has changed from "ready to be President on day one" to "ready to be attack dog on day one." Maybe he's a more astute evaluator of political talent than anybody gave him credit for.

They've basically dared the media to bring it on and try to find something disqualifying about her. And they've clearly made the calculation that nothing that's emerged thus far is disqualifying, at least to the extent that they'd be willing to take the hit of her withdrawal. I doubt anything disqualifying will emerge.

We're going to be seeing a lot of what we saw last night over the next 2 months. "Community organizer" is the new black. They'll run against Obama as if he's a lightweight, and they'll run against Bush as if he were a Democrat for the last 8 years. And make no mistake about it: Palin is precisely the right candidate to help him run that race.

I'll reiterate the Tracey Flick thing - I couldn't stop thinking about it throughout her entire speech. She's fueled by ambition, she's Machiavellian - she even has the same accent and verbal/facial tic.

Even if the Republicans don't win this election, Democrats have much to fear from Mrs. Palin in the future.