Cronyism and Vendetta: Palin Crosses the Personal with the Public
If you have reasonable friends otherwise compelled by Sarah Palin, nothing you could do this weekend might help more than pointing them to today's NYTimes profile of the Alaska Governor's management style, a Bush-Cheney blend of defensive incompetence, harassment of professionals, and brazen cronyism. There is too much to quote all the frightening bits here, but here's a taste (my emph):

[W]hen there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
...
Throughout her political career, [Palin] has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
...
Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

There's much more, including more context for her inquiry into banning books at the public library, and her various attempts - sometimes successful, sometimes not - to have government officials fired for standing up to her methods.

Sarah Palin is the worst kind of office bully: the kind that has little grasp of, or interest in, the actual policies that should govern her official actions. She has Bush's penchant for surrounding herself with ill-equipped but loyal boobs that might not look too smart next to her, and Cheney's (Nixon's?) belief in the ultimate, blameless, transcendent power of the executive, who should not be questioned or inhibited in any way. Fabulous.

Who are these people that disapprove of Bush/Cheney but support McCain/Palin?