It seemed like she was laying it on pretty thick at times. I have no problem with a politician talking to me in casual phrasing, but too much of the "Gosh-durn-it" "Oh, heck", grin/wink stuff starts to sound rehearsed, even patronizing ("They love it when I do this..."). It also looks like a mannerism she uses to cover areas where she's light on substance.

What do you think? Sassy & fun? Or overdone?

Winks: good (Reaganesque); "doggone it" absolute nonsense.

STARTS TO SOUND REHEARSED??!?

There wasn't a moment, a pause, a nuance, a breath that WASN'T rehearsed.
Her whole "performance" was the culmination of 2 solid weeks of practice and cramming-she didn't show one spark of insight or knowledge about anything that was discussed beyond her memorized talking points. Yes, she "got" it that she should deliver straight to the camera to "talk to Amuricka", but it was all shallow plastic "wink-wink" "I can put it over on you" fakery. Joe Biden, despite his stumbling delivery, came off as genuine and authentic and sincere and KNOWLEDGABLE-certainly what I would like to see in our next leaders. His show of emotion at the mention of the loss of his wife and children was REAL, and Palin couldn't even respond to it as a human being-she was fighting to avoid her typical frown that Tina Fey copied so well.
She was like the typical beauty pageant contestant talking about her "vision of World Peace".

The more she used those "folksy" phrases and winked at the camera, the more frustrated I got. Every time she did it I was thinking "Okay, but I'm still waiting for you to actually answer the question, Sarah."

Of course, at the same time I was cringing, knowing that there would be people watching who would be charmed by the "folksiness," without much concern for her lack of real substance.

Err, um, sorry about that lead line. VERY Poor Grammar. I had 2 ways of phrasing it in my head simultaneously:

"Does anyone else find the folksy thing a bit much"

and

"Is there anyone else who finds the folksy thing a bit much"

Say! Maybe that's what's going on in Sarah's head when she comes out with a really gobbledy-gookish line! And here I thought she was just saying everything that came to mind without processing first. That'll teach me for being so gosh-darned judgemental.

;>

Actually, your little typo makes much more sense than a lot of what Palin says. It's interesting to read the direct quotations, you know. It strikes me as simply a collection of phrases that are strung together with the most tenuous logical coherence. It's almost as if someone takes a paragraph on, say, the bailout plan, cuts it up with a pair of scissors, throws it in the air and, however they land, they get uttered in that order. What it really says about her, though, is that she is not emotionally invested enough in the subject to honor it with coherence. Some people have written that it is a kind of anti-intellectual power play, a kind of "code" to the faithful that underscores her anti-elitism. I don't think so. I actually think that she believes she can bs her way through an issue that she doesn't understand - which is the height of insulting in a candidate.