‘She has ignited something unusual,” John McCain said of his running mate, Sarah Palin, during a St. Louis-area radio interview earlier this week.

In a sense it’s nothing at all unusual. It’s all too usual and common. It’s just not what Washington tends to send out on the campaign trail. It took an outsider to change American politics.

“I’m a simple talker,” Palin told Rush Limbaugh when she called in to the talk-radio king and his 20 million or so listeners on Tuesday.

As Rush framed it, she is waging a campaign against most of the mainstream media in this country. Palin is representing “good, commonsense, patriotic hard-working Americans” — the people who don’t always feel adequately represented: for example, when the mortgage industry collapses, and they see themselves bailing out irresponsible people because the people they sent to Washington looked the other way while a quasi-governmental agency gave cut-rate loans to undeserving borrowers.

“He picked someone who does not have to pretend to relate to me, my family, and the challenges we face every day.”

That comes from an e-mail I received this week. It reflects thousands of e-mails that I have received since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. It is a very different attitude toward the Arizona senator’s choice of the Alaskan governor than you’ll hear from others — including some people I know and love and publish.

I hate the word “elitist.” This is a pet peeve stemming from experience. “Elitist” doesn’t need to be a swear word, but it has gained a largely negative connotation. Someone might nonjudgmentally observe that I can fairly be called an elitist because I have a voice at a prominent conservative venue. But I have been called an elitist for opposing Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court — with the suggestion that I hated her because she didn’t go to an Ivy League school. Well, I didn’t go to one either. The arguments against Miers on the Court were about the Constitution. They were about a wasted opportunity. They were ultimately about Sam Alito, and so I have no doubt I was right.



They were also about qualifications. Did McCain give the game away with the Palin pick because she is inexperienced? Here’s where people start getting downright angry. Palin got herself elected governor of Alaska and had the highest approval rating in the country when she was tapped by John McCain for the veep slot. Does she have years of Washington experience? No. But that’s exactly one of the reasons a lot of people are attracted to her. Was she the most experienced of the lot? The most experienced to become president at a moment’s notice? No. (And is there any question that Mitt Romney would be a valuable man to have somewhere on the ticket at just this moment in our economic history? There shouldn’t be.) But vice presidents aren’t always chosen that way. And there are fair and nondelusional arguments to be made that what she has brought to the GOP ticket and to American politics far outweighs any predictable Washington résumé.

They were also arguments about gender. Was Harriet Miers picked because she was female, to fill what was perceived by some — erroneously — as a chick seat on the Court? Was Palin picked just because she’s female? I think there is little doubt that gender was a factor. I also think that, in Palin’s case, gender added something specific and important: Her entry on the scene may have been a mortal blow to Roe feminism.

But it has become increasingly clear that there are people who just can’t stand Palin, and there are people who simply love her. And the “can’t stand” crowd seems to be dominated by talking-head and editorial-page types, and the “simply love” crowd tends to be regular Janes and Joes (Six-Pack and otherwise), and those — like talk-radio hosts — who hear from them daily.

Another reader tells me that “Palin has been the only really good thing, the only exciting thing for sure,” that McCain has done this election year — besides rising from the political dead, and that was less exciting than it was shocking. “She is, if nothing else, a terrific saleswoman.”

On Rush Limbaugh’s show on Columbus Day, a woman small-business owner and mother of a serviceman bound for Iraq called in and said, “Thanks for giving us a voice.” That’s what it’s all about — that’s what Rush’s success is about. It’s also what is so special about Sarah Palin. In them, people hear their own voice.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I listen to Sarah Palin and am disappointed. She echoes McCain, which she has to do, on Wall Street greed instead of talking about the Democrats who got us into this mortgage mess. She told Greta van Susteren last week, “Thank God for Title IX.” But these points are far from central, and what Palin has to contribute to advancing conservatism may be worth a few strategic and even policy differences. Heck knows, that’s why I believe John McCain needs to win in November.

As for those on the Right who reject Palin, I don’t think elite talking heads reject Palin because they reject, reflexively, the voice of the grassroots. I don’t accuse them of disliking, disapproving of, or downright hating Palin for any other reasons than the ones they enumerate — but I do think they might be missing why it is that her candidacy resonates and why that energy is much desired: A winning coalition has to be of and with the people who live outside Washington and New York. In this, Palin serves as an important reminder, perhaps, to northeastern conservatives.

Conservatism is not a fringe movement. Nor is it an elite movement. Nor is it a Washington movement. (It’s certainly not a New York movement.) Sarah Palin represents that. Here is a woman who hasn’t spent her life going to Heritage Foundation working groups or Manhattan Institute luncheons — and yet she gets it. In this respect, she is a conservative success story — she is a living, breathing, executive example of how widespread and adaptable a movement we are. Even in the most remote state of the Union.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.