Palin's Misunderstood Political Genius

No you really can't make this up:

A supporter sent her the biblical passage Isaiah 49:16: "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."

"If what was good enough for God, scribbling on the palm of his hand, it's good enough for me, for us," Palin said. "In that passage he says, I wrote your name on the palm of my hand to remember you. And I'm like okay, I'm in good company."

What some liberals fail to see in their Pavlovian reaction to this riff is that it was clearly meant partly as a joke, and partly as a way of cementing her identity with the Christianist base. The response is interesting: the crowd both applauds and laughs.

She uses the trope of evangelical literal use of the Bible to justify everything and anything - and she does it jokingly as another jibe against the "mainstream media" with a bit of self-deprecation thrown in. Genius.

It also provokes a response from the liberal blogosphere and media that cements the idea that she is out of her mind, a religious nut-job, etc, which completes the circle for her base. In this populist climate, with recession continuing, with alienation high, with fundamentalism at the heart of the new Republicanism, she is not to be under-estimated or dismissed. She is the next Republican nominee by default at this point.