Make it stop.

Update: Rod is a little underwhelmed:

She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero.

I would like to imagine that the devoted fans of Sarah Palin, the people who believed her to be Reagan and Joan of Arc combined, who held out such hope for her as a future leader in the GOP and conservative movement, will be as irrationally and powerfully angry at McCain for putting her in the impossible position she is now in as they were enthusiastic about the selection of her in the first place.  As critical as I have been of her, I liked Palin too much to see her become McCain’s apologist and I still like her enough to wish that she could be spared all this.  Meanwhile, McCain’s election effort truly has become the MonDole campaign I once joked about. 

Second Update: Please, please, make it stop.

Third Update: One point in Palin’s defense.  She was defending the ridiculous claim that being near Russia affords foreign policy experience (yeah, and maybe growing up in the same city as Sandia Labs as a kid gives me the necessary experience to run NORAD), and as part of that she made a remark about Putin and airspace that wasn’t terribly clear.  As some of us know, the Russians have begun resuming long-range bomber flights over the Pacific and Arctic as another one of their P.R. demonstrations of resurgent military power, and the Russian planes are intercepted and escorted by American or NATO jets when they approach U.S. and Norwegian airspace respectively.  That is what Palin was semi-correctly, but confusedly referring to, so that is one thing that she got partially right.  Of course, as governor she has nothing to do with any of this, which just drives home how stupid the entire “close to Russia” argument is.  It is also guaranteed that is a Democrat from Alaska were on a national ticket, his relative proximity to foreigners would be considered proof of how marginal, out-of-touch and un-American he was.  The “close to Russia” claim is exactly the sort of dismissive, absurd thing that McCain’s people have to use, because you have to know that McCain’s advisors, most of whom are obsessed with foreign policy to one degree or another, find Palin’s lack of international experience even more horrifying than most journalists.  McCain’s own camp is so embarrassed about this that they have to concoct implausible connections between Palin’s role as governor and international affairs because they find her to be, to quote a certain ex-mayor, not cosmopolitan enough.

Fourth Update: Ross is not happy.

Fifth Update: Robert Schlesinger comments on Palin’s answer on the bailout:

It’s like a talking points machine gone out of control. Or magnetic poetry that you have on your fridge—in fact, you can try it at home. String together key words and phrases like “shore up the economy,” “reduce tax rates,” “healthcare reform,” and “trade” and see what kind of Palinisms you can create.

Filed under: foreign policy, politics