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Of course Palin would throw rhetorical red meat to base; that's all the GOP's got in this election, the only constituency who is truly with them. Maybe they're hoping to fool just enough fence sitters with Bad Cop Palin and Good Cop McCain ("good" used very, very loosely here, only in comparison with Palin), but by and large, the narrative well has simply run dry for the GOP -- they've dominated American politics since ~1994, so it's hard for them to cast themselves as agents of change when their policies are precisely what the majority of Americans want changed. The complaint of their base is that the GOP hasn't gone far enough to the right, but that remains a minority opinion, a guaranteed election-loser, if they honestly ran with that.
I think we're seeing the swan song of the classic reactionary movement in these candidates. Maybe GW Bush will start a war with Iran and/or declare martial law to otherwise hijack the elections, but I just can't see McCain/Palin winning it in the fall, no matter what they say or do.
