The Sarah Show

A front-row view of Sarah Palin's campaign debut reveals why her grip on women voters is likely to last

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

More than 1,000 women turned up in Lebanon, Ohio, to see the Veep nomineeĀ—and her running mate.

The campaign's crowds, once elderly and male, now surge with moms toting children. Grandmothers tell of getting goose bumps when she speaks. A young girl holds up a sign that reads SARAH PALIN UR MY ROLE MODEL. At rally after rally, John McCain must wait to go onstage, while she is still being mobbed at the rope line. In Lee's Summit, Mo., when he attacks Barack Obama as being "wrong for America," the crowd ignores him and chants her name instead. The line to enter a Lancaster, Pa., event winds half a mile through a parking lot, where thousands wait as...

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