When the news broke yesterday that Sarah Palin had signed on as a Fox News contributor an awful shrinking feeling in the groin must have hit the execs at the network’s competitors. While the old media continues to try to paint her as a crazed redneck, the fact of her ascendancy as a serious power player is now an inescapable fact. Her autobiography, Going Rogue is a publishing phenomenon, having sold 2.7 million copies as of December 1 of 2009.  It’s one of  just four political memoirs to sell more than a million copies.

This from — as the left frames the narrative — a failed vice-presidential candidate who didn’t even finish her first term in office as governor of Alaska.  The old media and its enablers have tried in vain to discredit, demonize and disenfranchise the woman only to make her stronger. Yet still they hammer away at her relentlessly.

In the new book that has evey tongue in Washington wagging, Game Change, by political writers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, it’s claimed that some McCain staffers who worked directly with Palin began to worry that she could be “mentally unstable.” This claim has been trumpeted by left-wing bloggers and the usual suspects in the press, desperate to keep up the Palin-bashing so they can ignore Obama’s increasingly evident failures.

Some are even crowing at the news that Palin has joined Fox. They see it as a train wreck in the making. Yet, every time they write her political obituary, Palin has consistently shown them to be wrong. If anything, her hiring by Roger Ailes will be another feather in a cap that must be looking like a chief’s headdress by now. Fox not only has higher ratings and higher earnings than all the cable news channels combined, their numbers are growing while the others wither into irrelevance. No wonder the shrieks of impotent rage are so shrill over at places like MSNBC.

The old media fails to understand why Palin and Fox resonate with the public so strongly. That’s because they’re connecting in ways that the MSM cannot. Palin speaks to middle Americans in a voice they don’t hear from others from the Beltway and the usual media outlets. Fox provides a balance the others often fail to even attempt. The old media can’t understand that people see through the fictions and spin that’s been handed down as gospel for so long. The MSM no longer has a monopoly on dissemination. It’s fast becoming a relic as dated as Harry Reid’s dialogue.

Fox shows that once again, they understand the importance of reaching their audience and giving them what they want. People don’t want stale propaganda or second-hand gossip. And they’re tired of the usual faces shoveling out the talking points of the day while patting themselves on the back for their wisdom.

Palin has shown she is an effective communicator and a telegenic presence. We’ll see if being on TV regularly will limit her future options. But it certainly hasn’t hurt Mike Huckabee, another candidate from the last election who joined the Fox lineup. He’s actually been polling very favorably in fantasy president polls for 2012. Quite an improvement from his also-ran status in 2008.

It seems the Palin bashers only have themselves to blame for making her such a star. And Fox is happy to take advantage of it.