Why is Palin seen as being so conservative (relative to other GOP hopefuls)?

[Ban my account ffs!]

I love how people are saying she's conservative.  She participates in pissed off, yet feel good, no real policy agenda populism.  Plus she's an attention whore.

She can relate to people and seems folksy because she is.  She is the average American who by grasping for any thread of power she could get, got lucky.  Now she uses the folksy charm ingrained into her throughout her life to her advantage with the foaming-at-the-mouth conservative populists that have become the base of the Republican party.

But make no mistake:  The folksy charm is a put on, now.  I had a friend who is an adopted Korean.  She lived her whole life in Bemidji, Minnesota in the same house, until she went off to college in Birmingham, Alabama.  Within a few months, she had a pretty good southern drawl going without even thinking about it.

I doubt Sarah Palin is anything she presents herself to be without significant effort.

So Phil is right:  She's not stupid.  She's very clever.  Though I doubt her intelligence is that far above normal.. perhaps within one standard deviation.