I can tell you that since 2008 she DID put in efforts to become more informed and engaged on many of the key issues of the day, and had a staff that worked to keep her informed and able to speak on some of the big issues of the day, and some of the complexities associated with them.
I too share your frustration with some of her endorsements (as you said John McCain and Orrin Hatch especially), but it's not fair to not also cite the dozens of other GREAT endorsements she made and the impact she had in helping anti-establishment candidates overcome their establishment opponents.
I understand we disagree on the larger point of whether she is well-suited for the White House (I believe she is and you believe she is not), however, she has a better track record of experience and a better perspective and understanding on the fundamentals of how/why this nation was founded and the thinking of our Founding Fathers than the current president - there's no comparison.
Comparing her to a treasonous incompetent doesn't render her qualified, at least by my standards. Any such metric is subjective anyway.
I hold military CIC as a high fraction of presidential responsibilities. I'm with Patton there, especially as regards having read the classics in many fields by which to understand the context of the present. One simply cannot understand the guy across the table with whom one is negotiating or across the battlefield without knowing his country's history.
One simply cannot understand what is wrong with regulation of manufacturing without having learned how manufacturing works. Look at how Reagan traveled the country to learn exactly that. Look at how he studied Montesquieu, or Locke.
Reagan was nobody's "amiable dunce" because he had done his homework for years with his feet in many a manufacturing plant, and DID NOT rely upon his advisers to tell him what to think (think "tear down this wall," which his advisers tried to cut from the speech). Such is exactly my criticism of her in that I believe the RINOs think they can lead her down the primrose path with a clauqe of whispering "experts." She just hasn't done that background work with which to develop an appropriate ground of skepticism.
Simply quoting Hayek doesn't mean one has grasped Hayek, or any other pivotal philosopher. For example, I'm reading up on Titus Lucretius Carus. Why, is he obscure. Well, to the philosophers who were informing the founders of this country, absolutely not; he was pivotal. I simply see no sign of that kind of curiosity in Sarah Palin in any field.