Ross Douthat’s defense of Palin in the NYT has been making the rounds, and I have to say that I don’t disagree with certain aspects of it:
One hopes that was intentional. A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans […]

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Via Sullivan, Dave Weigel over at the Washington Independent makes the exact point we’ve been making ’round these parts:
This is fascinating. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) lost the presidency with 48.3 percent of the vote, and no one seriously suggested that they represented “real Americans” or anything else. As […]

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Had been sent a link elsewhere by an old friend to a piece on how Palin’s move signaled her own personal “Declaration of Independence“:
Sarah Palin sounded just like us! We, the people, understood every single word she said. This is the reason she is wildly popular in the first place. She IS one of us!
Identity […]

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Agree entirely:
This was obviously an incredibly hasty decision, with no prepared speech, delivered almost to minimize its publicity impact on the Friday of a federal holiday before the Fourth of July. If she were really re-launching her career in a new media-driven, Fox-News, Huckabee-Limbaugh vehicle, she would surely have set up the launch a little […]

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Good grief.
One day after announcing that she’s resigning, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blasted the media for their coverage of her surprise move and asserted that she’s held to a higher standard by reporters.
Palin, who has not had a public schedule for the July 4th holiday, posted a message on her Facebook page just before 5 O’clock Eastern describing […]

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Smart piece, as usual, by Daniel Larison:
Palin was surrounded and cheered on by almost nothing but yes-men, because once anyone tried to offer any kind of criticism that person seemed to become persona non grata in her circle and in the wider conservative world pretty quickly. That is why a reasonable column offering advice and […]

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What John Cole said:
Her resignation simply makes no sense at all. I feel the same way I did a couple weeks ago when Sanford was AWOL and no one knew where he was- you have no evidence that he was doing something wrong, but the behavior is just so bizarre you can’t figure it out. […]

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Hm. It’s one thing to not run in 2010, setting yourself up for a presidential run instead. It’s another thing to quit before your current term is up. Maybe another shoe yet to drop?
Update: Josh Marshall following pretty closely. Something is up here. This is pretty much the ultimate news dump - 4 p.m. on […]

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Like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, only Jan shoots wolves from helicopters.
Two bits over at Sullivan’s place that tie together - first a live quip from Charles Krauthammer:
“[Palin] is not a serious candidate for the presidency. She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept […]

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Amongst Republicans, thanks to Palin and a recent story in Vanity Fair.
Funny. Notes Sullivan:
What I make of it is that the selection of Sarah Palin was one of the most absurd, nutty, cynical and incompetent decisions in the modern history of American campaigning. And the Republican party, far from trying to understand how they made […]

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Hilarious. Stolen directly from John Aravosis:
Gov. Palin is reported to have signed a contract to write a book about her life, including her experiences as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate last year. In recent efforts to rehabilitate her image, she has talked about her love of reading and mentioned that one of her favorite authors […]

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Good luck with that.

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Via the Daily Beast:
In an interview that will air on Monday on The Tyra Banks Show, Levi Johnston says that Sarah Palin allowed him and Bristol to share a bedroom in her home, even though the Alaska Governor probably knew they were having sex. “I’m pretty sure she probably knew,” says Johnston. “Moms are pretty […]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgiSCUOw394

Olbermann dispatches Palin’s latest nonsense here with all the respect it deserves, which is to say, zero.
But I’m not quite grasping something here - though maybe helpful conservatives can point it out.
How is it that Katie Couric asks a few questions, Palin fumbles and stumbles, and the result is Couric’s fault?
Again, here’s Palin - Queen of […]

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But of course:
For that matter, this notion that Palin was widely ridiculed because of “class” is crazy. The governor may find it embarrassing, but she’s upper-middle-class. Playing the victim, and suggesting the media is picking on her because she isn’t wealthy is absurd.
But Palin wasn’t done, telling John Ziegler (remember him?) that Katie Couric and […]

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In part, because Republicans love her more than evah:
But among Republicans only, the most popular is Palin — with a whopping 73%-13% rating. But Palin’s overall score is a net negative, 35%-45%, which means she fares poorly among Democrats and independents.
Notes Kos:
Those Palin numbers are as hilarious as she is. Republicans worship her, the rest […]

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I’m so old, I remember when conservatives thought celebrity politicians were a bad thing.
You know - two or three months ago.

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This one’s pretty funny. Sarah Palin doing an interview while the guy in the background just keeps on killing turkeys. While she’s talking about the state’s budget process, etc.
Sometimes I think Tina Fey was the less ridiculous of the two.
Colleague JM says the only way this could be better is if there were banjo music in […]

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She really won’t go away, will she? Kevin Drum explains the continuing fascination with Sarah Palin:
Despite all the grief she’s gotten, I continue to think that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate represents the breaking of a consensual cultural barrier far more fundamental than most people realize. It’s not just that […]

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Piece of work, these conservatives:
BECK: I mean, I have to tell you if I heard once, I heard 1,000 times from people, and I never said this, never said this on the air because you just don’t say these things, but I heard a million times from people, “I’m going to vote for John McCain […]

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