And she's still Sarah Palin.
Which is to say: She still opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest but as governor cut funding for groups providing support to teen mothers. She still thinks it's OK to pretend she's always been a foe of earmarks and the famed "bridge to nowhere," though she liked both until it became convenient to dislike them. She still favors teaching creationism in the schools. She still doesn't think that global warming has anything to do with human activity. She's still confused about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She's still someone who, until recently, hadn't "really focused much on the war in Iraq." (Though before the McCain campaign handed her a new script in late August, she, like most Americans, worried about "not knowing what the plan is to ever end the war we are engaged in.") She's still under investigation by an Alaska state ethics committee for misusing her official position to push for the firing of a state trooper who had divorced her sister (and she seems to have thought it was OK to trash her former brother-in-law in front of his child, to the point where an Alaska judge warned that such disparagement of a parent was "emotional child abuse.") She still took a state travel per diem during days she stayed in her own home. She still flirted for years with the Alaska Independence Party, a group with creepy links to Southern secessionist groups (and a group with a founder, Joe Vogler, whose anti-American comments leave Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the dust: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. ... And I won't be buried under their damn flag.")Oh, right, and her major qualification to be a heartbeat away from the presidency is still her two terms as mayor of a town smaller than many U.S. high schools, followed by 18 months as governor of a state with a population smaller than that of Memphis.
So let's not get distracted by swine fever.