Palin: Brilliant Republican Strategy Or Imploding Failure?

The answer is --both.
The last-minute pick of Sarah Palin by McCain's handlers has turned a feature-length drama of "Grumpy Old Men" (you don't have Joe Lieberman to kick around anymore) -into a disfunctional episode of "Father Knows Best".
Let's face it; the Palin pick is nothing but a cynical appeal to the Evangelical Christian Reich, it has rallied voters long disenchanted with McCain. They love the fact that she would outlaw ALL abortion, even in the case of rape and incest. They love that she believes the occupation of Iraq is GOD'S WILL. They love that she is a follower of Armageddon-End-Times-Rapture theology, That her Pastor says Jesus is ON A War Footing, and that Alaska will be a Christian refuge in the final battle between good and evil. Imagine if Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden bit the heads off chickens, spread their entrails out and devined prophesy from the bloody patterns? I consider that the same as believing in the Rapture, which theologins correctly point out is not found anywhere in the Bible and is a fabrication of an Evangelical sect from the ninteenth century.

---- Lipstick on a pig?
Palin LIED about saying "no" to "The bridge to nowhere". Congress turned her down and she kept the money instead.
Palin LIED when she implied she sold the Governor's airplane on E-Bay. How cute. Instead, she sold it through an aircraft broker for a $600,000 loss.
Palin faced a citizen voter recall after attempting to fire the Librarian in Wasilla - for refusing to ban books in the public library.
While Holy-Roller Palin stands at the pulpit of her church, casting doubts on the moral integrety of Non-Evangelicals, her own kids are getting high and getting pregnant. But isn't that the true nature of American kids? So why deny State funds for special education and care for unwed teen mothers?
Management skills? How about loyalty oaths, or the fact that she took a budget surplus in tiny Wasilla, and turned it into a Twenty-million dollar debt?
How about Palin saying we may have to go to war with Russia?
Nominating Palin to be the Republican V.P. candidate is the equivalant of John McCain throwing sand in our eyes before a beach fight. Can't see me now!
Palin is the new roll-out of a female clone of George W. Bush, a malable dunce with a "Good Old Gal" image.
If, as Barack Obama said -John McCain's Policy is "The Pig", this mercifully unprepared "Caribou Barbie", is nothing but "Lipstick On A Pig"

Further reading:
Palin's Church
and Paul Krugman "A Blizzard of Lies"