Assuming Maverick isn’t able to pull the rabbit from his hat and that we are, in fact, going down in flames, it’s a comfort to know we’ll at least have the Palin-versus-the-press sideshow to entertain us this last long, cold, alcohol-infused month. Will she drop by SNL for a cameo opposite Fey? Will she prolong Brian Williams’s agony by continuing to cold-sholder NBC? Will she hold the press conference Andrew Sullivan’s been pining for so that we can finally find out whose uterus Trig Palin was carried in? Each day brings new hope. The more antagonism there is between her and The One’s media apologists, the more it adds to her stature among the base and the better the chances are of her remaining a national figure/fodder for media criticism. Everyone wins!

I need to redeem this dopey clip with substantive content, so read Althouse’s critique of Dana Milbank’s highly nuanced gloss on guilt by association in this morning’s WaPo. For a former regular on “Countdown,” he’s suddenly very sensitive indeed to rhetoric linking one’s political opponents to terrorists.

Update: This won’t hurt her standing with the base either.