Palin Silent On Market Dive, Effusive On 1960s Radical

From CBS News' Scott Conroy:

(WILMINGTON, OHIO) - On a day when the Dow plummeted 679 points to close below the 8,600 mark for the first time since 2003, Sarah Palin didn’t mention the tanking market at a rally here. Instead, she devoted the better part of her remarks to questioning Barack Obama’s relationship with 1960s radical Bill Ayers.

Palin took the crowd through a timeline of the Obama campaign’s apparently shifting public statements on when the Democratic nominee learned about Ayers’ radical background.

“And this is all about patterns, and I’m going to talk about the patterns,” Palin said. “And I’m sure some will say, ‘Geez, you’re getting kind of negative.’ No, it’s not negativity, it’s truthfulness, and American voters deserve to know.”

Palin did speak about the ailing economy in broad terms and referred specifically to the possibility of local job losses at DHL, but she was silent on the day’s developments on Wall Street.

Although she recently declined to call Obama “dishonest” when asked by a reporter, at the Wilmington rally, Palin repeatedly questioned the Democrat’s truthfulness and said that of the two presidential candidates, McCain was “the only man with courage.”

Palin said that Obama’s decision to launch his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist could be explained by examining the Illinois senator’s ambition.

“It's only gotta be ambition explaining launching your political career in the living room of an unrepentant terrorist, and ambition explaining that you can claim on Tuesday that John's idea was a good idea, in fact it was their idea, and then the next day that the homeowner resurgent plan was actually stolen from you, and then you attack it the next day,” Palin said.