Kirsten Powers does a good job ticking off how the various bungled attacks on Sarah Palin by the left have only energized Republicans and hurt Barack Obama.

This latest attempt by Juan Cole, using a cutesy play on Palin's "hockey mom" joke from her convention speech to equate her to a Muslim fundamentalist, is more of the same:

But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

While the Obama campaign spent a great deal of effort yesterday trying to knock down Palin's credentials as a reformer over her position on the Bridge to Nowhere, his supporters in the media like Keith Olbermann were busy openly mocking her former pastor and her religious views trying to frame her as a Bible thumping zealot.

This is, politically speaking, a Road to Nowhere in that it will only invite a reevaluation of the twenty years Obama spent in the pews of his church listening to Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

UPDATE: Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic personifies the sneering tone of the Beltway MSM with the first sentences of his new piece:

It took only a few days for the saga of Sarah Palin to go from Frank Capra to Preston Sturges to Judd Apatow, and then for the farce to stop being funny at all. These are not the times for right-wing screwball. The world is aflame and we have been pondering the knocked-up daughter of a pert and uncannily confident Alaskan mediocrity who was elevated to a national ticket for the purpose of changing the conversation.