Steven Taylor's "basic theory of Sarah Palin":
I think that Palin represents the culmination of the rise of partisan (specifically in this case Republican/conservative) media that started in the mid-to-late 1980s and grew up alongside the growth of niche media and the segmentation of news/commentary consumption in the United States because of cable and the internet. It is possible now to not only get conservative-oriented news and commentary it is possible to get exclusively conservative-oriented news and commentary. Further, Palin has cleverly exploited long-standing resentments within the public about perceptions of liberal bias in the press. This is especially true of older voters who remember (and resented) the pre-cable era when all the news came through the Big Three Networks and from anchors who were often believed to have liberal-leaning perspectives.