In his pro-Palin column in the NYTimes, Brooks, the embodiment of an East Coast Beltway elite and self-styled intellectual (he actually starts off his column by citing “midcentury psychologist Abraham Maslow”), cheered the fact that all night Paliln advertised “she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington. She ran not only against Washington, but the whole East Coast, just to be safe.”

He went on to note how Palin's “accent, her colloquialisms and her constant invocations of the accoutrements of everyday” likely connected with “casual parts of the country.”

In essence, Brooks, the conservative East Coast intellectual, toasted the fact that Palin projected an anti-East Coast, anti-intellectual style (she was folksy!), while conceding she didn't win on substance.

Another example of how campaigns can force pundits out of their comfort zones?