Sarah Palin dismissed critics who had suggested that the former Alaska governor’s firearms-infused rhetoric contributed to the shootings in Tucson that killed six and wounded 14, including US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In a video message posted on her Facebook page, Palin lashed out at “journalists and pundits,” who she said “should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

President Obama, meanwhile, was said to have worked throughout the night on the speech he delivered Wednesday night at the memorial service at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Obama was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Aides said the goal of his remarks was to administer to those mourning, honor those impacted by the shootings — including the victims, the heroes, and all those grieving in Tucson and beyond.

Palin, under criticism that her political rhetoric had helped create a climate for political violence, addressed the issue by sending an email to the conservative commentator Glenn Beck, which he read on radio.

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them,” the conservative Tea Party favorite and former Alaska governor said in her first major response to critics.

By managing her image almost exclusively through Twitter, Facebook, a reality television show and appearances on Fox News, political observers say Palin has managed to become both omnipresent and insulated.

She and her aides are facing questions about whether the strategy that had served her so well since she resigned as Alaska’s governor 18 months ago was the right one to counter criticism that she helped encourage a potentially dangerous strain of anti-government sentiment.

Palin had urged conservatives to “reload, not retreat” after a fierce debate over Obama’s plans to overhaul the healthcare system. She also published an electoral map identifying vulnerable Democratic congressional districts, including Giffords’, with rifle cross hairs.

Palin’s accusation to critics of “blood libel” by blaming her rhetoric for contributing to the shooting rampage in Tucson was met with incredulity, shock or simple confusion. Assistant House Minority Leader James Clyburn, D-South Carolina, became one of the first lawmakers to weigh in Wednesday.  “You know, Sarah Palin just can’t seem to get it, on any front. I think that she’s an attractive person, she is articulate,” Clyburn said on a radio show.

“But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what’s going on here.”

Clyburn’s comments were tame compared to the chilly reception and head-scratching that Palin’s statement caused journalists and pundits, where the anti-Semitic roots of the term “blood libel” did not go unnoticed.

“Whether it was her intention or not today, she is feeding the beast of what has really been a pretty nasty ideological finger-pointing fight that we have been watching on Twitter and the Internet and on some forms of cable television,” NBC News’ Chuck Todd said on MSNBC.

“There was some sympathy for Palin over being tied to shooting, (and) she chose to go inflammatory,” The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz wrote via Twitter.

In an editorial entitled: Sarah Palin Doesn’t Get It,” Jonathan Capehart wrote in Wednesday’s Washington Post:

“Sarah Palin has emerged from the protective cloak of Twitter and e-mails to Glenn Beck to speak directly to the American people about the tragedy in Tucson. In a video, she expresses condolences for the victims’ families and concern for those recovering from Saturday’s horrific events. But for nearly eight defensive minutes, the woman who has been at the center of a stormy national debate over our super-heated political discourse does her best to absolve herself of any role in that discourse.”

Conservative pundits have defended her. 

Charles Krauthammer wrote in Wednesday’s Washington Post:  “The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the “climate of hate” created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.”

But Ari Fleischer, who was White House spokesman for President George W. Bush, said Palin had to address the shootings with more than a Facebook post, though he would advise her to wait a few days for the political dust to settle.

“At a time like this,” Fleischer said, “what the nation wants more than anything else is for people to rise above the nonsense and the politics and to be gracious. There’s nothing like letting people see your heart.”