I agree with psrock, while she didn't come off as an idiot, she did not come across as prepared to be president or even honest.  She answered almost none of the questions that the moderator asked her.

Come on sqrl. You've gone from a neutral party who wants to debunk myths to a full-fledged member of the Palin Defense Force. She did extremely well for someone who was supposed to speak English. Wasn't a debate though. She dodged every single question. And even said it was intentional because dodging questions is now "straight talk."

Palin impressed by talking more fluidly than in her interviews, but that's about it. She didn't show much knowledge, just memorization and the ability to dodge questions.

We got Claire McCaskel (sp?) out here saying Palin failed to de-link McCain from Bush ..and that was her main criticism of Palin tonight. Gimme a break folks..the gig is up, she did very well and she had solid answers.

You make it very hard for me to take you guys seriously if you honestly think she is incompetent after this debate. Its a completely untenable position now and that's exactly why Obama surrogates are out their abandoning it as you read this.

A little honesty and integrity please? Give the woman credit, she knew her stuff and she did very well tonight by any measure.

I am just going to copy and paste what Rubang said:

Come on sqrl. You've gone from a neutral party who wants to debunk myths to a full-fledged member of the Palin Defense Force. She did extremely well for someone who was supposed to speak English. Wasn't a debate though. She dodged every single question. And even said it was intentional because dodging questions is now "straight talk."

Regarding Palin, the improvement I saw from the interviews to the debate was in form, not substance. If she truly knew her stuff, she wouldn't need to dodge so many questions. How many times did you see Biden dodge questions? Once or twice at most.

Nevertheless, she exceeded my expectations.

I seem to remember a few Obama surrogates saying that she'd be a great debater... anyway though, I'm sure there were some like you said.

This debate didn't really increase my confidence in her ability to lead at all. She dodged nearly everything aimed at her (attacks AND questions) and began ranting off old talking points.

I've never denied that I like Palin, and I think its fair to say all of the attacks and smears have moved me more and more in her favor, especially as things you guys are proven wrong time and time again. And the place where she consistently does the best is when you remove the media filter between her and the people as she pointed out very astutely tonight. I don't think that is a coincidence at all that her two best performances have come when the media opinion gets removed and she gets to talk directly to the people.

@issue,

She did very well here tonight in pretty much every respect, and on top of that her performance makes sense in regards to her extremely high approval rating in Alaska, then we have the democrat surrogates dropping the incompetence issue like a bad habit, and the Luntz Group polling data shows that she did very well with independents scoring record highs on a couple of issues, and not just on likability but people also mentioned her substance as well. With the exception of foreign policy, which she did very good on as well, I thought she had better answers than Biden across the board.

Honestly if you guys can't just admit that she did very well, even on substance, then we truly have no common ground to work from.

I pointed out McCaskel because she is basically "the" Obama surrogate.  In her introduction on the segment I just saw Chris Wallace introduced her as "a woman the Obama campaign regards as their best and most eloquent surrogate".  This isn't a fringe comment, this was a talking point.

edit: Howard Wolfson also just said "She passed any test that people put out there for her to pass." and "She did very well tonight."  he went on to say he thinks Biden did better but the point is that he didn't think there was a legitimate basis to criticize her or he would have. endedit(ok now I'm done.).

As for the rest of what you said, I think it falls nicely into the "not going to bother" category.  We fundamentally disagree if thats truly your position.

I have done my fair-share of Palin hating, but I also posted the pictures to disprove the whole pregnancy myth, and discourage it when people bring up non-issues like that.

But I cannot agree that she was strong in the substance area.  She may have been strong on the substance that was written down on a notecard that she brought into the debate, but she was not strong on the substance of the actual questions in the debate.  Every chance she got to dodge an issue she did it, and every time she could revert back to her script she did.