By Associated Press
Published: 09-17-08
Jan Thibault was all ready to sit this election out.
Disappointed that Hillary Rodham Clinton was off the Democratic ticket and worried that Republican John McCain would just continue President Bush’s mistakes the 51-year-old mother of four felt there was nobody left in race who “knows how it is to walk in my shoes.”
Then McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate and converted Thibault into an enthusiastic supporter of the Arizona senator’s presidential bid.
“She’s a down-to-earth mom like me” Thibault a customer service representative from St. Augustine Fla. said of Palin. “She has a basic knowledge of what it means to be middle class.”
Palin’s greatest gift to McCain so far appears to have been in shoring up support for him among core conservatives who have held the Arizona senator at arm’s length but embraced the Alaska governor enthusiastically. She’s a darling of the GOP base for her conservative positions most notably her strong opposition to abortion in almost every case telegraphed vividly each time she appears with her infant son Trig who has Down syndrome.
Beyond that though Palin is giving McCain an opening with a crucial group of swing voters — many of them women like Thibault — who espouse traditional values but are working class and mostly concerned about the economy.
Some of them had previously supported Clinton because she connected with them on pocketbook issues.
Like the so-called “Reagan Democrats” of the 1980t Sara Taylor President Bush’s former political director. “It is exactly those folks — middle to lower income not college-educated culturally conservative but worried about paying their bills — that are historically swing voters.”
Top strategists for McCain believe Palin helps the GOP presidential nominee both satisfy the party base and appeal to independent voters in the center including Democrats who are attracted to her reputation as a reformer. Working-class white women were especially responsive to her selection they say particularly after the Obama campaign questioned Palin’s experience.
Democrats have scoffed at the idea that Palin whose views are the opposite of Clinton’s and whose resume is thinner could garner support among women voters who backed the New York senator’s presidential bid.
But Obama’s campaign moved swiftly to counter any inroads Palin might make with women. It is deploying high-profile female surrogates including Clinton to battleground states to try to blunt Palin’s appeal.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky D-Ill. organizing female lawmakers to campaign for Obama believes his campaign can reverse any advantage Palin might bring McCain with women by highlighting her positions.
“I feel confident once the issues become the focus once again and women understand that this is a team that would limit the rights of women and really is anti-woman in manymany ways that the numbers will swing back” Schakowsky said.
