Sarah Palin, Westboro Church & the 1st Amendment

Alaska's leading constitutional scholar, Sarah Palin, sent out a tweet about last week's Supreme Court decision in the Westboro Church case. She clearly was not in tune with the eight members of the Court who sided with Westboro's free speech rights. Now, she is walking back her tweet. Justin Elliott at Salon.com has the story.
The episode raises a strategic question for any future campaign by Palin - who is going to tell her to stop tweeting? And, the episode again shows the GOP's problem going into 2012. Anybody read any tweets from Romney, Pawlenty or Barbour this weekend? Of course not. Palin can affect the debate in a cost-free way that none of her potential rivals have achieved. She may not understand the difference between the Establishment Clause and the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment, but she understands, and has mastered, the art of modern communications in ways that leave her rivals in the dust.