Palin’s stunning performance BooMan observes – a performance that left him feeling stupid – but,

“Sarah Palin was propped up by written responses”

Can we have a debate without props or cheating?

Why was this allowed?

Thinkprogress provides this Video

Sarah Palin Read Her Answers in Last Night’s Debate

For Sarah Palin, last night’s debate was an open-book exam. She spent much of the evening methodically reading and rehearsing answers from “carefully scripted talking points.” Palin’s notes were largely hidden from plain view, resting behind the lectern where she stood.

Because the cable and network television stations did not show a split screen of the debate, most viewers could not see that, during Joe Biden’s answers, Palin spent almost all her time looking down and studiously reading her notes. But viewers did see that when Palin delivered her answers, she would repeatedly glance down to check her talking points.

ThinkProgress has compiled a video documenting some of the instances where it was clear to the audience that Palin was propped up by written responses. Watch a video compilation:

[.] Video at link at link above

Politico reports that “on at least ten occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney’s vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.”

[.]

(highlights added)

Hey, all the propping won’t make her ready in the next four weeks or the next six months.

TPM: notes conservatives are raising the white flag “One thing to watch for: Prominent conservatives essentially conceding that the race is over.”

In Wapo –Krauthammer:

Krauthammer’s Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone.

[.]

Then, seeking a game-changer after the Democratic convention, McCain threw blind into the end zone to a waiting Sarah Palin. She caught the ball. Her subsequent fumbles have taken the sheen off of that play, but she nonetheless invaluably solidifies his Republican base.

When the financial crisis hit, McCain went razzle-dazzle again, suspending his campaign and declaring that he’d stay away from the first presidential debate until the financial crisis was solved.

He tempted fate one time too many. After climbing up on his high horse, McCain had to climb down. The crisis unresolved, he showed up at the debate regardless, rather abjectly conceding Obama’s mocking retort that presidential candidates should be able to do “more than one thing at once.” (Although McCain might have pointed out that while he was trying to do two things, Obama was sitting on the sidelines doing one thing only: campaigning.)

[.]

In the primary campaign, Obama was cool as in hip. Now Obama is cool as in collected. He has the discipline to let slow and steady carry him to victory.

[.]

He’s been moderate in policy and temper ever since. His one goal: Pass the Reagan ’80 threshold. Be acceptable, be cool, be reassuring.

Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he’s a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own — fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a “second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition — do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he’s got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

One of the few times I agree with Krauthammer. With what’s ahead, we’ll need an FDR…not a McBushCheney or a “Bush in a skirt”