Poll: Could Week of Gaffes Help Palin in Debate?

Unbelievably, CBS News has yet again produced exclusive footage of Sarah Palin screwing the pooch. This time, she's voicing her opposition to Roe v. Wade -- the only Supreme Court ruling she disagrees with, off the top of her head -- and then immediately agreeing with the legal theory behind the ruling.

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All credit to Katie Couric for eliciting this bit of intellectual incoherence. Like a clever interrogator, she asks the same question two different ways to catch any inconsistencies.

What's most impressive this and other recent Couric coups is that they haven't been -- contrary to claims from the McCain camp -- examples of "gotcha" journalism, just patient, meticulous groundwork. "Where do you get your news?" is the sort of basic question any thorough interviewer would ask to get a sense of a candidate's worldview; Palin's inability to produce a single newspaper or magazine title was revealing -- perhaps not so much of incuriosity, as some critics have said, but of how utterly rattled she's feeling right now. At this point, Palin is like one of those rats in a Skinner box receiving shocks at random intervals; she doesn't know where the next jolt is going to come from. As a result, she tries to avoid saying anything at all that might be construed as a gaffe -- and in so doing commits a different type of gaffe.

Which leads me to this question: What will be the effect of the past week's worth of embarrassments, and the votes of no-confidence by various conservative commentators, on tonight's debate?

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