If by punish she means ‘vote for’ then yes. Voters will punish her.
Yeah, agree. I think perhaps Palin is making a statement that she is a conservative and not a Republican. This probably aligns her with the majority of those on this blog. In fact, it seems to me that the Tea Party movement may actually evolve into a political party in it's on right. If this should happen, then we may very well see the political spectrum roughly equally divided with the Democrats representing the the far left, the Republicans the mushy middle, and the Tea Party the conservative right. This would probably give the Republicans (mushy middle)the swing vote going to the left or right issue by issue. But, who knows...