Sarah Palin’s halting, incoherent endorsement speech for Donald Trump is the sort of thing that usually comes from the mouth of a nativist stroke victim, a fan of medicines or an imbecile. Sometimes all three at the same time.

It’s amusing that Palin, who’s always pretended to be a great supporter of American troops and has repeatedly excoriated President Obama, even today, for not showing them enough respect (though he always does), is now an ardent advocate of the only national American politician in recent memory (ever?) to mock our service people. What makes it worse is Trump, who requested multiple military deferments and has never seen a bunker that wasn’t on a golf course, ridiculed the extreme sacrifice of the very person, John McCain, who made Palin’s ascendency possible.

From Edward Luce at the Financial Times:

To chants of “USA, USA”, America’s best known hockey Mom briefly stole the limelight during the 2008 election before embarking on a career as a conservative entertainer. Her 2016 comeback, which she kicked off with an endorsement of Donald Trump on Tuesday, may turn out the same. Should Mr Trump becomes the next US president, Ms Palin could be his secretary of energy (as he has promised). Failing that, she will return to her life in Alaska as a fading social media star.

Yet her embrace of Mr Trump also has a biblical subtext. Ms Palin was John the Baptist to Mr Trump’s Jesus. Years before Mr Trump trashed conventional wisdom by boosting his poll numbers with gaffes, Ms Palin had patented that style of campaigning. The more tongue-tied Ms Palin seemed, the more intensely her supporters backed her. The more the media mocked her, the more her fanbase exulted. Mr Trump has elevated that approach into an art form. In an age when knowledge is a mark of elitism, ignorance is power. It is also great marketing.

During the 2008 campaign, Ms Palin famously could not think of a single newspaper title she read. She also failed to recall the name of a founding father. Likewise, she was pilloried for citing Alaska’s proximity to Russia as evidence of her foreign policy credentials. The more derision Ms Palin suffered, the greater her heartland appeal. This is how Ms Palin’s “teachers, and teamsters, and cops and cooks, and stay-at-home Moms,” also felt. Mr Trump has collected Ms Palin’s hockey puck and skated on with it. When he betrayed ignorance of the “nuclear triad” in a recent debate, experts were floored. How could someone auditioning to be commander-in-chief be unaware of America’s three nuclear delivery platforms? Mr Trump’s admission did him no harm. His supporters knew how it felt to be the butt of liberal sneering.

Ms Palin’s endorsement also highlights a lesser known breach — that between “movement” conservatives who tend to be more ideological and generally back Ted Cruz in Iowa, and Mr Trump’s more populist fan base.•