Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin {updated}

{updated most recently @ 11:45pm - see below}

As always, excellent observations.

Highlights from what she has to say about Sarah Palin:

Because [Palin] jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.

And also:

I'll tell you how powerful Mrs. Palin already is: she reignited the culture wars just by showing up. She scrambled the battle lines, too. The crustiest old Republican men are shouting "Sexism!" when she's slammed. Pro-woman Democrats are saying she must be a bad mother to be all ambitious with kids in the house.

update: well this is a shocker... (via AmP reader mark:)

Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan: “It’s over… They went for this, excuse me, political bull**** about narratives. Every time Republicans do that… they blow it.”

Source.

I'm out the door right now and don't have time to immediately comment. AmP reader Mary:

Peggy Noonan has updated her WSJ article to explain her unfortunate epithet, which was made about "political narrative" and not about Gov. Palin. She believes that she was 'mugged'. Considering the speed with which the MSNBC video clip went viral and the way liberal bloggers are now skewing the context of her remarks, she's probably right. She's not the only victim, though.

Curious.

update 2: Matthew Balan notes the accelerated timeline at NewsBusters.