Palin slams Obama, D.C. insiders

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The "hockey mom" hit the national stage Wednesday night with a series of body checks.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's surprise pick for running mate on the Republican ticket, turned questions about her experience and reform image against her Democratic rivals on the third night of the hurricane-shortened Republican National Convention.

Largely unknown outside of Alaska a week ago, Palin was an unquestioned star in the Xcel Energy Center. Delegates showered her with a prolonged standing ovation.

She rewarded the crowd with a series of quips and attacks directed at Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

"This is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform, not even in the state Senate," Palin taunted in a deadpan delivery. "This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

Palin cast herself as a victim of hostile reporters and a scornful Washington establishment, skewering a favorite conservative target and evoking shouts of "shame on you" to the media corps from the delegate floor.

"Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators," she said. "I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country."

She also defended her relative lack of political experience — mayor of a small town and less than two years as Alaska governor — by swiping at one of Obama's first jobs out of college: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

To the delight of delegates, McCain strolled onto the stage after the speech and hugged his running mate.

"Don't you think we made the right choice" for vice president? he said, as delegates roared their approval. It was an unspoken reference to the convention-week controversy that has greeted her, including the disclosure that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant.

The packed convention hall exploded in cheers as McCain stood with Palin and her family, including mother-to-be Bristol and the father, Levi Johnston, 18.

The audience shouted in agreement at line after line delivered by Palin, 44.

Next step may be harder

Her speech may prove to have been the easy part.

From here, Palin moves into a national campaign where she will have to appeal to audiences that are not necessarily primed to adore her. She will have to navigate less-controlled settings that will test her political skills and her knowledge of foreign and domestic policy.

And she will have to convince voters she is prepared to be a vice president at a time the definition of that job has been elevated by the current and prior occupant to the status of governing partner, something the nation might have been reminded of Wednesday by images of Vice President Dick Cheney embarking on a mission to war-torn Georgia.

"The people who are in the hall; they've already been sold, they are choir," said John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, who had never met the candidate or heard her speak before he saw her on television with McCain last week. "Now the question for her and for McCain and for everybody who is inside the hall is, how to clarify their message to the American people?"

She had top billing at the convention on a night delegates also lined up for a noisy roll call of the states to deliver their presidential nomination to McCain. At 72, the Arizona senator is the oldest first-time nominee in history, collecting his party's top prize after pursuing it for the better part of a decade.

Palin drew cheers from the moment she stepped onto the convention stage.

Maverick mold

If McCain and his campaign's high command had any doubt about her ability at the convention podium, they needn't have. With her experience as a sportscaster and time spent in the Governor's Office, her timing was flawless, her appeal to the crowd obvious.

"Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys," she said as the audience signaled its understanding.

In her solo debut on the national stage, she traced her career from the local PTA to the Governor's Office, casting herself as a maverick in the McCain mold, and seemed to delight in poking fun at her critics and her political rivals.

Since taking office as governor, she said she had taken on the oil industry, brought the state budget into surplus and vetoed nearly one-half billion dollars in wasteful spending.

"I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef, although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her."

She spent the first part of her speech introducing her family one by one to the crowd, including her husband, Todd. "We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy," Palin said.

Her best-received lines were barbs at Obama.

"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers," Palin said. "And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."

Promise of change

She also took a swipe at the Illinois senator for his remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Americans embittered by economic times seek refuge in guns and religion. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco," she said, tossing in Obama running mate Joseph Biden's birthplace.

Palin pledged repeatedly to change Washington, D.C. She and others who spoke Wednesday — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani among them — blamed problems on Democrats, who have been out of the White House for eight years but have led Congress for the past two — and omitted almost any mention of President Bush and his low approval ratings.

Palin pounded Obama and Democrats on familiar turf: taxing, spending and fighting terrorism. "What exactly does he hope to accomplish after turning back waters and healing the planet?" Palin asked sarcastically. "The answer is to make government bigger."

Compiled from the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times