The soft bigotry...

Speaking of entitlements...

“Michael, please,” says my imaginary interlocutor. “You know perfectly well that even the ‘high-end conservative pundits’ will slurp down any old slop they’re fed by the party. That’s their job. It’s degrading and dehumanizing, sure, and a lot of them can’t face themselves in the morning anymore, but you have to remember that the pay is awfully good.”

On cue, there's David Brooks' triumphal bleating this morning.

By the end of her opening answers, it was clear she would meet the test. She spoke with that calm, measured poise that marked her convention speech, not the panicked meanderings of her subsequent interviews.

When nervous, Palin has a tendency to over-enunciate her words like a graduate of the George W. Bush School of Oratory, but Thursday night she spoke like a normal person. It took her about 15 seconds to define her persona — the straight-talking mom from regular America — and it was immediately clear that the night would be filled with tales of soccer moms, hockey moms, Joe Sixpacks, main-streeters, “you betchas” and “darn rights.” Somewhere in heaven Norman Rockwell is smiling.

With a bemused smile and a never-ending flow of words, she laid out her place on the ticket — as the fearless neighbor for the heartland bemused by the idiocies of Washington. Her perpetual smile served as foil to Biden’s senatorial seriousness.

Where was this woman during her interview with Katie Couric?

Where, indeed?

Somehow, I don't think Norman Rockwell would be amused.

And will the war on Medicare never end?