McCain's comments about Palin may have sounded weird to you and me, but perhaps they don't sound weird to his intended audience. I don't think that McCain was making any attempt to speak to mainstream America, or even to moderate Republicans. He was speaking directly to the Republican Party power base: the conservative-to-ultra right. The Republican Party forced Palin on him over his own better choices. They knew that McCain didn't stand a chance of winning without the far right. It must be galling to McCain to realize just how irrelevant he is to his own party. Palin is the one that the Republican Party wanted on the ticket, so McCain is put in the position of having to praise her in the only language that the far right finds acceptable: she's a good mom, she's got a tough husband, she's a 'reformer' who wants to go and destroy the big bad federal government... blah, blah.