Sarah Palin : New voice for the 'Birthers'?

We all know by now that the partial-term Alaska governor is a score settler. So naturally, Sarah Palin sees President Obama's birth certificate authenticity as fair game because, hey, people had questions about baby Trig too:

Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers. ...

I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce hisbirth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.

I have to ask: Is the fact that Palin uttered something so nutty really surprising? At this point, our ability to feel taken aback by anything Palin does (barring some kind of Arianna Huffington-esquepolitical conversion) is pretty worn out. She could come out and say the Earth is 10,000 years old, that gays can be "cured," that the president pals around with terrorists or that some parts of the country are more "pro-America" than others (correction: the last two she actually said). We'd roll our eyes and perhaps indulge in the guilty pleasure that comes with feeling a little less small-minded those who seek power. But surprised?