I think what's important is how her conservative, religious, nearly entirely white, mostly non-urban followers view themselves as an increasingly threatened cultural minority yet cling to the myth that they are the "real America". They aren't all non-urban of course, but they definitely view contemporary urban culture as the enemy of their "traditional American values". They see themselves and their values threatened by what they suspiciously call the "mainstream media", whatever that could possibly mean in this Internet Age where vast quantities of information and news are readily available from a multitude of highly diverse sources.

They are scared to death at the rapid growth of black, brown, and asian minorities in America, and their Republican Party has made no serious attempt whatsoever to accomodate this reality of increasing diversity - on the contrary they have retrenched further into their narrow, comfortable cultural constituency.

Even among whites they feel increasingly threatened by jarring demographic changes. Every day in America thousands of elderly white Americans die of old age, seniors with familar conservative values for the Palin folks, and they're replaced on the voter rolls with their teenage and early 20ish grandchildren, young people who view America very differently, and who hold much different values, and who, incidently, vote Democratic by a huge margin.