Certainly the Obama campaign can focus group an ad that talks about how McCain's ideas are just 4 more years of Bush. Block quote from McCain about the economy, then block quote from Palin about the environment, etc. Ending with some tag line --The Same/More of the Same/We can't afford 4 more years of this...

As I just commented in another thread, Democrats are powerless to stop her from becoming the topic, they can only derail her by exposing her leadership deficit and her adherence to the radical right agenda.

Then.  You will understand that the ones you named and many, many other extreme Rightists and their transgressions have indeed received copious space.

But, Palin is one of the two people on their ticket.  It is she, not Romney or Huckabee, who the GOP is attempting to sell to Indys as an example of McCain's "Maverick Independence."  The truth is that McCain is an extremist as well, and by allowing him to sell Palin as a reasonable person, we allow him t sell himself that way as well.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Both McCain and Palin are horrible and both truths can be spoken.

Sadly, there are stll a lot of commenters here, as well as seemingly one primary contributor, who have gotten to the point where they would rather look for sexism than address what is at stake in the election.

I told my conservative friends many times over the last few months, as we were discussing the possibility of a Palin VP nomination, that things would get ugly, very quickly, and in recent months I always had at least partly in mind a post on Talkleft denying Gov Palin any personal or moral credit for having decline to abort her Down Syndrome child ahead of time.  It was obvious to me that the whole complex of emotions in and around abortion and related "cultural" issues would be unleashed.

It's not just for this reason, but obviously also Gov Palin's popularity and, yes, her extensive and varied record and life experience both in and out of polics, that make her such a threat - to the extent that many on the left will devote themselves to taking her down regardless of the effort's deleterious effects on near-term electoral prospects.  Otherwise, I suspect, the resounding and embarrassing backfire of last week's failed assault on her would have gotten through to more of you.

Small wonder that David Warren, the dean of Canadian conservative pundits, when looking south this week declared "[h]er nomination as the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate, and then her extraordinary speech to their national convention...[to be] easily the most important world event of a week in which there was significant breaking news from Georgia, North Korea, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, and elsewhere."  He want on to make the by now commonplace comparison of her to Margaret Thatcher, nothing that when Thatcher first arose.  Thatcher, says Warren,

received exactly the same reception from the British Left when she first rose to prominence: the same sarcastic references to her class origins, the same suggestions that she was utterly unprepared, the same visceral misogyny, the same panicked search for domestic tabloid scandal, the same "why don't you go home, dear, and take care of your children" dismissals. And likewise, this response played an important part in helping her flatten them.