For a speech that some on the left stupidly maintained was an elaborate “prank,” it sure does seem to have been treated pretty seriously by those who were there (seriously enough, in fact, to inspire two Palin-haters to walk out in a huff). Alas, the event was closed to the press so this tiny clip of her burnishing her “Main Street” credentials ahead of 2012 is the best I can do, but the Journal got hold of the entire vid somehow and published some of the choicer excerpts. She touches on “death panels,” of course, but for my money this is the most significant bit:

Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks…

How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words “fox” and “hen house” come to mind. The Fed’s decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you’ll see the Fed somewhere in the background.

Ending the Fed is currently job one among the Paulnuts and an occasional hobbyhorse for Glenn Beck. Sounds to me like Palin’s positioning herself as the strong-form libertarian rEVOLution alternative to Mitt and Huck. Are the Paulnuts going to cotton to her reputation for social conservatism, though? Seems like an odd match in style, if not in substance, but not a bad strategy all in all.

Palin-skeptics may, perhaps, enjoy Time’s write-up of the event, featuring snotty asides about her “rattling off financial terms of art” and “rambling” about the ancient land bridge that once joined Asia to Alaska. Exit question: Is Sarahcuda really more “Main Street” than Huck? Dude, the guy used to eat squirrel — that he cooked in a popcorn machine. How much more “authentic” can you get? I ask you.

Update: The phrase of the day is, of course, “common sense.”