'She's Something Different - Out of the Box': Rising Star's Speech Fires Up Party Grassroots

A day after her prime-time television debut, Sarah Palin was yesterday hailed as the single most important unifying force behind the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. The novelty of the self-described hunting, shooting and hockey mum, who also holds down a day job as a political reformer and governor of Alaska - has provided excitement and glamor to a campaign that formerly had trouble electrifying the Republican base.

Now, after the party's rapturous response to Palin's speech on Wednesday night, its activists can claim their own rising young star to counter the Democratic party nominee, Barack Obama.

"To have a female vice-presidential nominee for the Republican party is very, very exciting," said Ellie Lopez-Bowlan, who heads a Republican women's group in Montrose, Nevada. "She's refreshing in the fact that she's young, she's a working mother and she's a true conservative - I really appreciate that."

It is unclear how Republicans will react to Palin once the novelty wears off, or whether they will forgive her a newcomer's mistakes on the campaign trail. But for the moment she is their rationale for going out to win the election for McCain.

Republican enthusiasm for Palin has risen even after the questions about her experience, and the steady drip feed of stories about her personal life. Yesterday the McCain campaign furiously denied a National Enquirer story that Palin had had an affair, calling it a "vicious lie". "The smearing of the Palin family must end," said a senior adviser, Steve Schmidt.

As far as the McCain campaign is concerned, nothing will stop its plan to build on Palin's star role at the convention, deploying her in the white working class small towns around Detroit, Michigan, and the conservative bastion of Colorado Springs. Her first stop on Monday will be in Tampa, Florida.

Palin pulls in two important demographics behind McCain: aged 44, she can connect with younger voters who supported his rivals in the Republican primaries, and she exercises a strong appeal to working mothers. She has also galvanized two key components of the Republican base that had been cool to McCain: fiscal conservatives and social conservatives.

In her speech to the party convention Palin won wild applause when she talked up her record as a cost-cutting governor of Alaska who sold off the official plane on eBay and got rid of her taxpayer-funded official chef.

"She's something different - out of the box," said Mark Bloch, who heads the Wisconsin chapter of the free market organization Americans for Prosperity. "There was no enthusiasm before - no real reason to support McCain. There was nothing to fire up the grassroots."

Palin also struck a chord with conservatives and Republican women by talking about her love for her pregnant daughter, Bristol, 17, and her five-month-old son, Trig, born with Down's syndrome.

"I could see immediately how she connects with working families and women who are raising children but also trying to give something back to the community," said Colleen Morrone, a mother of three from Pennsylvania. "I'm definitely more enthusiastic now. It has changed the entire dynamic of the campaign."

That is what the McCain campaign intended. The excitement she generated was precisely what it needed. After eight disillusioning years of George Bush, the Republican base was demoralized. Fiscal conservatives were angry at the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war. Evangelicals felt that Bush had not done enough to put religion back in the public sphere. Neither group was thrilled with "flip-flop" McCain.

McCain initially was preoccupied with trying to win over independent voters and Democrats who were not behind Obama. He shifted tack last month, using a presidential candidate's forum at a California mega-church to solidify his support among evangelicals by coming out strongly against abortion. Then came Palin. As Robin Moore, a telecom worker and delegate from Wisconsin, put it: "With Palin, McCain has shown what it takes to be a conservative."