What you describe there, number 6, "the woman behind the checkout at the Target store ... the working mom, the single working mom, the mom who hasn't the perfect family with the pain in the ass teenage daughter, the working mom with the special needs kid, the working mom with the son serving over in Bagdhad, the wife of the working man, the woman who can take on the washington establishment"

That IS the frontier woman, translated into present day societal terms. The frontier ideal celebrated in all those old westerns is a hard-working woman of the common people, someone with a family to take care of and someone who has faced the trials and tribulations of ordinary life on the homestead.

So she is indeed evoking those same old images. She's not "Calamity Jane" precisely (that's too specific and idiosyncratic a character)....no, she's the rancher's faithful wife on the old homestead, able to grab a long rifle off the wall and fight off a marauding grizzly bear that's after the livestock, yet still looking good despite all that hard work, toil, and tears...and not takin' no guff from the cattle barons and other rich folks up on the hill, no sir! Hell, she's a Tom Sawyer dream! (Michelle Obama would be too...only problem is...she's Black and her husband is half-black and he talks like an intellectual....hmmm....well, that won't quite do it for Middle America.)

Sarah Palin is the old Middle American frontier myth in full-blown grandeur, and she's white, of course. That goes without saying, right? And she's a "hotty" (so they say).

What more could they possibly want to draw an enthusiastic crowd out from conservative Middle America?

It remains to be seen whether the people on the right will be impressed by any factual data from her past record that would cast doubts on her suitability for the high office she is running for.

I highly doubt it. I think they will easily be able to overlook all the kind of documented stuff that Amos is so articulatly and gleefully documenting here, because people are NEVER interested in inconvenient facts that hurt their case. They are only interested in facts that serve to bolster their own chosen argument.

I've noticed that for years and years on this forum. It's the defining characteristic of the partisan mentality and the insecure mind, which only shows interest in facts if those facts support its usual convictions and its usual desired purposes and ends.

If not, the facts are either ignored or they are dismissed as "irrelevant" or "unimportant" or "misleading" or something like that.

This election, as usual, is not about issues. It's a personal popularity contest. It's a personality drama. Prepare for a couple more months of the usual idiocy. I expect it will get even worse than it has already gotten.