Of all the reactions to Sarah Palin's Friday morning press conference, the most common by far is bafflement followed by gentle and not-so-gentle mockery.

Those who've long since deemed Palin a criminally incompetent Lady Macbeth were delighted to see her crash and burn. Sensing some kind of ulterior motive, one emerging narrative is that she is abandoning ship before some messy ethics violation is revealed in an effort to preserve her 2012 presidential viability. One outlandish theory I've toyed with is that she intends to build a new life as an evangelical super-celebrity, the tough-but-loving mother of a large Christian brood who can step in where Jon and Kate left off. Yet my sense is that Palin's breezily informal remarks were earnest, and that she intends not to run for president but rather to rescue some semblance of a normal family life. But really, it's impossible to tell.

What does seem increasingly clear is that Palin's collapse represents the end of a certain kind of politics. If the culture war really is ending, culture warriors like Palin will fade from the scene.

As a candidate for governor of Alaska, Palin ran as an opponent of the local Republican establishment and a champion of a windfall profits tax on oil companies, in many ways a platform that would more naturally fit a Democratic reformer. Palin's social conservatism was immaterial because it was in the Alaskan context utterly unremarkable. Her outsized approval ratings reflected the fact that she embodied Alaska's idiosyncratic politics, which are simultaneously pro-gun and pro-handout. While Republicans in the lower 48 fret about the economic and cultural threat posed by increasing dependence on government largesse, Palin was celebrated early on for the doubling of disbursements from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which climbed to $3,000 in the early and happy phase of her one and only gubernatorial term. Politically, Palin was many things, but a Goldwaterite conservative intent on slashing spending and encouraging self-reliance was not one of them. To put it a bit more harshly, you could say that Palinism was instead a pale imitation of Peronism.

During the presidential campaign, much was made of Sarah Palin's cultural populism. Largely bereft of substantive policy views on national issues, she was scrutinized on questions of cultural style, not least because of her compelling personal narrative. Millions of conservative voters identified with her deeply held social conservatism. Her sprawling family and infant son Trig captured the aspirations of millions of families who longed for tradition and stability. Many conservatives hoped that as a woman, Palin could recast the abortion debate. The pro-life movement, traditionally seen by those on the left and center as being hostile to working mothers, to an egalitarian understanding of gender roles and as a smokescreen for an agenda designed to hobble the advancement of women, hasn't been helped by the movement's dearth of female leadership.

Palin promised to represent a down-home feminism, one that Red America could embrace, while making the pro-life case through the power of her example, and not a hectoring, sectarian tone. As the country changes--as the number of churchgoers declines, as the white working class shrinks--it has long been clear that social conservatives will have to adapt to win over younger voters who've grown up in a very different cultural environment. And who better than the youthful, appealing governor of Alaska, a frontier state far from the Deep South?

Social conservatism succeeds when it is tied closely to real-world economic concerns. The case for stable families isn't about condemning single mothers or lesbians and gays. Rather, it's about creating the best environment for raising children. Punishing tax burdens and long commutes and failing schools are issues that social conservatives can and do care about more than marriage amendments.

But from the moment Palin made her debut at the Republican National Convention with a powerfully pugilistic speech, she emerged as the second coming of Spiro Agnew, best known for his lacerating attacks against the nattering nabobs of negativity in the national press. Whereas John McCain assiduously avoided discussing social issues, Palin became the campaign's mouthpiece for any number of culture war cliches. It was a sad commentary on the state of the exhausted conservative movement. As Republican support has faded, efforts to energize the conservative base have increasingly taken an Us vs. Them turn, one that pits true believers against the elitist left.

Ronald Reagan ran as the candidate of economic common sense against a Democratic party that seemed excessively ideological and inward-looking. Though he was certainly a social conservative, he framed his positions in the broadest possible language. The end result was that in 1984, the staunch pro-lifer won 49 of 50 states. Twenty years later, George W. Bush was unable to make a similarly appealing economic case and was thus forced to lean more heavily on social issues. The old Reagan majority steadily shrank. Despite the economic turmoil that defined the 2008 campaign, Palin hardly played the economic card at all. What had been one arrow in the conservative quiver--the cutting anti-elitism--became her only weapon.

But the Obama presidency is helping conservatives rediscover their roots as the defenders of an open, dynamic, entrepreneurial economy. Though the GOP will always be the more socially conservative party, one gets the impression that the culture war is fading. Younger voters are by no means monolithically liberal on cultural issues. Yet they don't seem inclined to vote on those issues. And so a figure like Palin, who seemed so promising at first, offers them nothing.