Peggy Noonan was caught back in August saying that Sarah Palin was a cynical choice for a running mate. Not only did she say off-the-record but while the audiotape was still rolling that Palin was not fit to lead, she also said the Republicans just blew it. Watch it :

Well, she's putting her nail on that McCain-Palin campaign coffin and it's worth a read from top to bottom. I am particularly impressed by her saying what I've been thinking for months about Palin : She is an ambitious woman, that's for sure, but only for her own sake.

We know nothing about her core values, about what exactly she stands for and how she is supposed to improve the lives of others by becoming VP or even President. She has no ideology, only raw ambition. It's what makes her a dangerous error. An error Noonan describes as just saying things.

She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

But it's unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things.

It reminds me of the happy little robots of the "Stepford Wives" remake. Something that, by the way, Noonan feigns to be but is certainly not; especially when she says :

This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

Noonan shouts out, and for a good reason,  Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley. That Buckley, the king of US conservatism, the one who founded and published for decades National Review. His son not only endorsed Obama, he had to resign from his post at the magazine his father founded due to the threats and insults. In a rather republican sort of way it seems fitting Christopher Buckley was "let go" for becoming an economic liability to the magazine.

In her shout out Noonan finally says her apology to the potential "Et tu Brutus" from McCain :

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

What is amazing is her complete distancing of herself from the Republican party. The party that gave her her boss and hero, Ronald Reagan. It's like she caught an anti-Palin virus that's making her conservatism reject the GOP.

Hopefully she'll spread the contagion around.