it depends on what you mean by “popular”

At the end of last week, the MSM gave a collective sigh of relief to find poll results that showed Sarah Palin’s star had dimmed.

What’s that? She drew a crowd of 60,000 in Florida on Saturday?

The Villages, a vast, upscale planned community north of Orlando, has about 70,000 mostly adult residents — many of them military retirees — who vote reliably Republican in statewide races. Tens of thousands inched along roads into the picturesque town square of the complex, where they stood in sweltering heat for about four hours as local GOP officials and a country band revved up the crowd.

“Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!” they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed — along with free water bottles — by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000.

Admiring throngs mobbed the Palin family’s arrival and departure, snapping souvenir pictures. Autograph seekers thrust campaign signs, caps with the McCain-Palin logo and copies of magazines with her face on their covers, and the Palins responded warmly.

In its headline, CNN refers to a crowd of “thousands.” Inside the piece, the number 60,000 is mentioned.

Though the audience was one of the Palin’s largest to date, the actual size of the crowd was unclear. According Mike Tucker, the fire chief of The Villages who was made available to the press by the McCain campaign, 60,000 people crammed into the streets to see Palin speak.

“There were people down the side streets, people down in the parking areas, people who couldn’t quite make it around to the main areas,” Tucker said, adding that many people were let into the rally without tickets, making the crowd count impossible to verify.

The enthusiastic crowd welcomed Palin with shouts of “USA!,” and she chanted back along with them. As in many of her speeches, Palin promised that hard-working Americans will dig the country out of its current economic woes, lacing her remarks with fulsome praise for the nation’s industrious spirit. She used the words “America” or “Americans” 24 times during her 22-minute speech.

Polls, schmolls.

The genie is out of the bottle.

I can’t believe I have to live through another election stolen by the Republicans … ’cause you do know that’s what’s gonna happen, right?