Sarah Palin did very well last night, I think that much is clear. The Wall Street Journal has a fine editorial noting this fact, and also pointing out where McCain and Palin can improve their message when it comes to the financial crisis:

Maybe John McCain should fire the advisers who won't let Sarah Palin do more interviews. The Alaska Governor has faced two major campaign challenges -- her acceptance speech and last night's debate -- and each time she's shown herself worthy of the national stage. Let Mrs. Palin be herself, and then when she makes a mistake, as every candidate does, it won't be treated like some epic judgment on her fitness to be Vice President...

...Mr. Biden had his strongest moments on the economy, trying to link Mr. McCain to the current financial problems and "deregulation." On this point, neither Mrs. Palin nor Mr. McCain have yet offered Americans an adequate response. It isn't enough to denounce "greed and corruption" on Wall Street, as Mrs. Palin did every few minutes. If that's the problem, voters will elect the Democrats as more practiced class warriors.

On the second point: I think this isn't so much a Palin problem as it is one of McCain reacting to the crisis with populism rather than an appeal to the truth of the situation. Hopefully that changes soon.

Idiot Kos Diarist: Write your own damn speech!

Joe Biden: Are you trying to make us lose?

Oh, and there's this little gem of a tidbit too: Her TelePrompTer was on the fritz.

No shit, sherlock:

Sarah Palin found some unlikely allies Wednesday as leading academics and even former top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsed the Republican charge that John McCain’s running mate has been subject to a sexist double standard by the news media and Democrats.

Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen, who has written best-selling books on gender differences, said she agrees with complaints that Palin skeptics — including prominent voices in the news media — have crossed a line by speculating about whether the Alaska governor is neglecting her family in pursuit of national office.

“What we’re dealing with now, there’s nothing subtle about it,” said Tannen. “We’re dealing with the assumption that child-rearing is the job of women and not men. Is it sexist? Yes.”

“There’s no way those questions would be asked of a male candidate,” said Howard Wolfson a former top strategist for Clinton’s presidential campaign.

David Harsanyi in the Denver Post:

You may find it confounding that partisan Democrats believe that Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, terrorist Bill Ayers and convicted felon Tony Rezko are unfair "distractions," yet Palin's 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy demands front-page attention from both the Washington Post and New York Times.

Now, e-mails pour in from folks who claim to represent "women" — women, I expect, who wouldn't vote for a Republican ticket if Susan B. Anthony adorned it. They are, suddenly and wholly, offended by identity politics.

Palin is, without doubt, in part, a token pick. So what? The appeal of a candidate includes his or her policy position, but also background (that's why we are blessed with the folksy charm of Joe Biden), experience, ability, race and gender. Hillary, despite what you've heard, is not the smartest woman in America. And can anyone dispute that one element of Obama's allure is the potential of his becoming the first African-American president?

Perhaps critics believe if they keep telling the public that McCain's pick is scandalous and irresponsible, the Republican nominee will tap a more reasonable mate (you know, like Joe Lieberman) before it's too late.

Who knows? Maybe the lynch mob will bury Palin's candidacy. Maybe Palin will bury herself, proving to be incompetent and unworthy. But how can a candidate be portrayed as a failure by experts who haven't heard a word from her mouth?

Not only is this dishonest, it betrays a real political anxiety over Palin's impact.

Politically, of course. But Peggy Noonan nails it.

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to a future Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.

The Wall Street Journal:

We are instructed that Mrs. Palin isn't qualified, because she lacks Washington experience. But until recently that was said to be a virtue in Mr. Obama, who is at the top of his ticket. Meanwhile, there's hardly a peep of media notice that the Obama campaign is preposterously trying to remake Joe Biden into a poor scrapper from Scranton when he's been in the Senate for 36 years. They all know Joe. But when Mr. McCain picks an authentic middle-class mother who is also a Governor, we are told she's not up to the job.

The spin du jour is that her choice reflects poorly on Candidate McCain because she wasn't properly vetted. Yet this seems to be false. Campaign vetter A.B. Culvahouse, White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, says Mrs. Palin told the campaign about her pregnant daughter and her husband's DUI at the age of 22. On Monday, Time magazine's Nathan Thornburgh wrote from Wasilla, Alaska, that Bristol Palin's pregnancy had been known by virtually everyone there, with little made of it. But what do these private family matters have to do with Mrs. Palin's credentials to be Vice President in any case?

The press in 2000 ignored marijuana use by Al Gore's son, as it should have. But now we are told a teenage pregnancy is going to raise second thoughts among evangelicals and "family values voters" about Mrs. Palin's ability to be both a mother and a public official. This is also false.

Leaving aside the embarrassing reality that the Beltway press corps barely knows any evangelicals, religious leaders this week greeted the pregnancy news with support for the Palins. Offering support for unwed pregnant women and their families is a primary activity of these churches from one end of America to the other. That might even make a good story for someone this weekend.

What's really going on here is that the Beltway class can see how popular the Palin pick is with Republicans outside Washington, and especially with middle-class conservatives. As Richard Land, a leader with the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin closed the "enthusiasm gap" between the two parties.

There is nothing more dangerous to entrenched Washington power than a populist conservative who looks unlikely to buy into Washington's creature comforts. Take a close look at Governor Palin's record on ethics and energy in Alaska, and it becomes clear what this Beltway outburst is actually about. The irony is that while Senator Obama is running on change, his acceptance speech made explicit that he's promising only more power and money for Washington. Sarah Palin's history of taking on the career politicians of a corrupt Alaskan GOP machine -- her own party -- shows that she's the more authentic change agent.

What a weekend it was, and what a week this is shaping up to be. The way that Governor Palin and her family have been treated since the announcement on Friday is beyond anything I can recall in politics. The absolute hatred expressed toward her, the contempt, the ridicule - it's simply beyond belief.

As I've had a chance to dig in on Palin's political career, I've been impressed. And I think that any fair-minded person would have to look at what she's accomplished and give her some credit for it, even if they disagreed with her positions on the issues. But if it wasn't clear before, it's pretty damn clear now: the left isn't remotely fair-minded. The left is out for blood. The left has, in fact, completely lost its mind. Check this out - here are a few comments from Kos that should scare the hell out of any lover of liberty:

If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade...

This is about Power . . . How it is obtained—and how it is wielded in ways that affects all of us.
Are you telling me that you would not use character-destroying lies to ensure a war against Iran does not occur?
Are you telling me you would not spread lies about a man’s integrity, even if it defeated a candidate who take away the right to choose?
Are you telling me you would not destroy the love a family holds for one another, even if it meant letting someone who would destroy the constitution become president?

Remember that when you see Dem politicians groveling at the YearlyKos Convention. Remember that when you see Keith Olbermann blogging at Kos. Keep in mind just how rabid and insane and paranoid the audience is that they're playing to.

Governor Sarah Palin deserves better than this crap. Her daughter deserves better. Trig deserves better. These vile people are deliberately spreading the most disgusting and hateful rumors and openly trying to destroy a family in a naked and shameless grab for political power. What sensible person would entrust them - OR THE CANDIDATES THEY SUPPORT - with any power at all?

This is complete madness, and I wonder how it will end. I'll say this much - I haven't been this angry about politics in a long while, and if I was excited by McCain's choice on Friday, I'm now multiple times more angry over the way Palin has been treated by the vicious bastards on the blogs and their fellow travelers in the MSM who feign "objectivity" in their "reporting."

Governor Palin, give 'em hell tomorrow night.

Deserves better.

How about Hillary? Is she one of the women who'd appreciate the opportunity here?

Geraldine Ferraro says that many women feel disaffected by the way Hillary Clinton got treated by the Democratic Party and the media — and they will appreciate an opportunity to support a historic ticket...