With 12 days to go until the election, today was the wrong time for Sarah Palin to shoot herself in the foot and alienate her base. But that's what she has done, in style, on Univision.

Interviewer: To clarify, so you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants? Palin: I do because I understand why people would want to be in America. To seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here. It is so important that yes, people follow the rules so that people can be treated equally and fairly in this country.

Needless to say, the wingnuts, those few mentioning it so far, are not at all happy.

The Corner leads the charge:

What Palin's response shows is that, first, she's completely open to whatever kool-aid they want her to drink — i.e., she has no innate resistance to amnesty for illegals that would cause her to look for less-unappealing ways of saying what the campaign wants her to say. And second, it shows what the campaign is telling her about McCain's views on the issue — if McCain's talk of "border security first" were anything but boob bait for Bubba, his operatives would have made it clear that Palin was supposed to include that in her discussion of immigration, but she didn't even make a passing reference to it.

Daniel Larison:

I have given up trying to understand what Palinites see in their favorite candidate. If this does not drive home how malleable and unacquainted with the relevant policy options she is, I’m not sure what would.

Michelle Malikin simply says "We're Screwed, '08!"

With twelve days to go, this is going to hurt the McCain/Palin camp even worse than the $150k blown on Sarah's make-over. Immigrants are the "barbarians at the gate" that folk like Neo-Roman elitist Andy McCarthy are so afraid of

Originally posted in a different form at Newshoggers