@hawkeye10,
Quote:[Palin] is disappearing of the national radar
That's been predicted for years now but it hasn't happened. Her profile is diminished since Roger Ailes (for reasons not entirely clear) dropped her as a regular presence on Fox But she shows up in some manner in the mainstream press pretty much every week and as I pointed out, she has an enormous and loyal fan base.
This self-monetizing scheme, as Rick Perlstein details, is the foundational structure of right wing media. She's following a successful model.
But that's not the only way in which it's a real mistake to imagine her some sort of oddity. She is a paradigmatic representative of a very old right wing version of "populism" that is marked by anti-intellectualism, rejection of science and empiricism, faith in the common man's superiority over the expert and educated "elites" ("common sense" falls off her tongue in nearly every speech or comment) and the over-arching sensibility that she and her followers are being regularly victimized. For a significant portion of the American population, it is precisely these features of Palin's person, ideology and rhetoric which establish her credibility.