That Sarah Palin.

Now, she's rabble-rousing in Orlando, Florida! This, from the Fort Myers News-press.com:

    The Villages, a vast, upscale planned community north of Orlando, has about 70,000 mostly adult residents — many of them military retirees — who vote reliably Republican in statewide races. Tens of thousands inched along roads into the picturesque town square of the complex, where they stood in sweltering heat for about four hours as local GOP officials and a country band revved up the crowd.

    "Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!" they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed — along with free water bottles — by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000.

Why, yes — that is how the author and editor wrote "Sa-Rah." Why do you ask? I thought it curiously innovative, although I couldn't hear it properly in my head: Sa-Rah, as in "Que Sera, Sera?" or SAR-ah, as in the name?

    Admiring throngs mobbed the Palin family's arrival and departure, snapping souvenir pictures. Autograph seekers thrust campaign signs, caps with the McCain-Palin logo and copies of magazines with her face on their covers, and the Palins responded warmly.

No word yet on whether the News-Press is a "right leaning" or "left leaning" member of the media, but I have my suspicions.

Nevertheless.

A lot of the people I know are making fools of themselves by continuing to view Palin as a politically disastrous pick, a rube, a hick, or all-of-the-above. But these are the same folk that "misunderestimated" that Bush fellow — two straight election cycles.

Many of my leftist intellectual colleagues would do well to remember that being intellectual does not mean being better in any human dignity sort of way. Ditto being from a Big City, or being Sofistycated.

And here I thought the Democratic Party was the inclusive, embracing one. Many folks speaking for the Dems have gone a long way toward destroying that particular myth in the past few weeks.