Sarah Has The Ladies Fired Up

Sarah has the ladies of Lebanon, Ohio fired up.

As ear-splitting screams and wild applause welcomed Sarah Palin to Lebanon, it occurred to me: Dick Cheney never got cheers like this. Joe Biden? Dream on. Barack Obama, sure - but the women who were yelling for Palin are not fainters.
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They were jammed together in rain ponchos, overflowing the metal cattle corrals, spilling into side streets a block away. They furiously hammered their blue McCain balloon-tube clappers. It sounded like a Toby Keith concert.

And that's something entirely new for buttoned-down, Brooks Brothers Republicans.

"SARAH, SARAH, SARAH," they chanted, waving signs that said "Read My Lipstick - Drill Now," and "Working Mom 4 Palin."(Best T-shirt: "Small-town Gun-toting Christian for McCain." That was a woman, too.)

The speeches were cut-and-paste leftovers. But only the press seemed bored. When Palin said, "This is what America is all about - small-town America," the noise could be heard five blocks away.

I think Sarah represents a return to the Jeffersonian ideal of America. People capable of standing on their own with the help of their neighbors. The yeoman farmers. The practitioners of a trade. The small businessmen and women. The once forgotten Americans. The little people. The people the elites can't see. The people of fly-over country. Obviously they have become the no longer silent Americans. Which is a good thing.