Sarah Palin has at least two forces working in her favor as she prepares to step onto the high wire here tonight — the crowd that loves her and the crowd that scorns her.
The first group, America's cultural conservatives, dominates the Republican convention hall, and they've adopted Palin almost overnight as their Joan of Arc. They like her uncompromising position on abortion, they like the guns in her home and the game in her freezer, and they like the way she symbolizes a jaunty "up yours" to cultural snobs the world over. So Palin can count on a passionate welcome and abundant cheers as she accepts the GOP's vice-presidential nomination.
One McCain adviser, a person who opposed putting Palin on the ticket, had to admit this week that she has transformed social conservatives from ho-hum to hyped, single-handedly closing a gap in McCain's army. "She has been a brilliant base play."
The second group is more amorphous; call them the Coalition of the Flabbergasted. From the moment John McCain announced his choice of the rookie governor of a remote state as his running mate, they have generated a drumbeat of skepticism so intense that Palin has nowhere to go but up. Politicians spend a lot of time playing the expectations game, but in this case Palin may win by forfeit, because her opponents have set the bar somewhere around her shins.
Not that she's taking it for granted. Palin has been sequestered for days with former Bush Administration speechwriter Matthew Scully, among other wordsmiths, wonks and speech coaches, boning up on policy and crafting her text. She is said to be keenly aware, as one leading Republican noted, that an untested candidate, dropped into the last weeks of a close race, can sink a campaign in a few disastrous sentences.
One knowledgeable source told TIME that Palin plans to deliver a relatively short, plainspoken address in the voice of an ordinary working mom. She'll talk about challenging old-boy networks — oil companies, Alaska's corrupt GOP establishment — and learning to lead. Raising five kids while making a career won't necessarily earn you an invitation to the Council on Foreign Relations, but it does instill organization and discipline. That's what Palin brings to the table, the source said.