With Sen. John McCain's announcement of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate, the dynamics of the election have completely changed. Palin was perhaps the only alternative to Mike Huckabee as VP that has a chance of getting social conservatives to actively work for the Republican Party for the next ten weeks. Many, like me, are deeply disappointed that Huckabee was not selected, and it will take some time to assess the final choice and determine our next move and how actively we will work for McCain's campaign at this point.

However, some points should be made about the impact of Palin's selection on women voters. Some people assume the Democrats have an inherent, automatic edge with women voters. That is not actually true. The Democrats only topped the GOP in the last presidential election among SINGLE women without children. Mothers split evenly between the two parties, and in fact the GOP won among married women.

With so many female voters still angry about the manner in which the media treated Hillary Clinton, and with Obama's campaign for not only failing to speak out but also smirking and encouraging the anti-woman attacks by the MSM (particularly some of the most liberal media outlets, it should be noted, who in their messianic adoration of Obama were willing to dismiss their usual over-sensitivity about women's issues and restorted to outright misogyny for months). Then the leadership of the Democratic Party refused to say anything about the problem, or to issue any warnings to Obama's campaign to speak out or at least stop chuckling and egging it on.

Thus abandoned by the Democratic Party and by nominee Barrack Obama, women voters are feeling understandable anger and frustration. While it's doubtful that a large number of former Hillary Clinton supporting women will completely abandon the Democrats and their nominee to the extent the party and nominee abandoned women voters, it happens to be very likely that at least some of them will choose to look elsewhere. If our party can maintain the support from the segments of women voters that we earned in 2004, we would only need to add a few percentage points to those two groups, and then win as little as 5-8% of former Clinton backers from the remaining women voters. That would actually create a female voting block that alone would probably be enough to win the election easily, even if our support among other voting groups remains the same while Obama increases the turnout of African-American voters and youthful voters.

Palin also has the chance to tour the South with Mike Huckabee, and mobilize social conservatives. Her story as a mother who refused to abort her child despite grave assessments from doctors and others is precisely the sort of personal narrative on a key issue that can overcome disappointment about Huckabee's lack of a nomination. With him standing at her side while she relates her story, coupled with perhaps a break to do some fishing and meet with local NRA representatives, will do a lot to secure the South for our party. Beyond this, she must barnstorm the nation to speak with women's groups, particularly organizations for mothers, and speak about women's issues in the job market and education and politics. She must stress how important it is to the GOP to see women take on more leadership roles in our party, and the party must augment this by having every Republican woman in every state start speaking about this topic. It is time to end the Democrat-and-media sponsored myth that our party represents the opposite of women's issues and ambitions.

One added bonus to consider using would be to have her husband travel with her out West in certain states, like Nevada and Arizona, as well as states with voters who have Native-American heritage. Seen on stage and in public with her, as well as introducing her with a short speech noting his own heritage, would be a good way to add to a short message from Palin and McCain about his work on immigration policy and the bond between church-going Latino voters who should be a natural constituency for our party, were it not for some of the unfortunate and extremely over-the-top bashing immigrants got from some loud segments of our party in the past few years. Send Huckabee out West with McCain and Palin on this issue as well, for some added "oomph" to the message of both a more immigrant-friendly and church-goer friendly GOP ticket. Palin as a mother has much to say that would be welcome by Latino and Native-American mothers as well. The growing segment of immigrant small-business owners in key states like Nevada is also important and opens an additional avenue that our party can pursue with these voters -- they are a large and growing voting block, and if we ignore them and continue to bash them then we will pay the price this election and for many more to come.

Palin and McCain together should make a point of speaking loudly and frequently about their work on ethics reform. McCain should take an introductory role in many cases, giving his narrative about his work on ethics reform in the Senate, but then hand off the microphone to Palin and let her delve into the background she has in working for real substantive changes and reforms in the party and in government in general. Palin can stand as the symbol of women in the White House, social issues, and reform. She must be made a clear partner on the stump, and must be given the chance to speak forcefully on these issues again and again, aggressively and without allowing the media to send her off-topic or overshadow the narrative she must help create for herself and our party. Let her focus on domestic policy talking-points, but quietly and subtly prepare her for big, key foreign policy discussions and points to make on the stump and most importantly in the debates. Getting management of Iraq under control, dealing aggressively with Russia's resurgent military posturing, and trade matters would be the best talking-points for her to stick to.

Trade is an issue that can be linked to China, for example, and that has inherent overt and subtle defense-related undertones that work to our party's advantage much more than the Democrats. Russia likewise benefits our party greatly, and Biden and Obama can quite easily be demonstrated to be naive and weak in how they would deal with Russia compared to McCain and Palin. On Iraq, Palin should focus on better management of the situation and on our nation's responsibility to keep our promises to the Iraqi people and not desert them when victory is right in front of us all. This last point, about promises to the Iraqis and not deserting, should be the key talking-point for Palin. "Deserting" and "abandonment"/"abandoning" should be used repeatedly to accurately describe what the Democrats are proposing, as these are MUCH better talking-points than things like "cut-and-run". These are much more emotional, personal words and they will have a lot of power.

I'd also remind everyone during the debates that while Biden can certainly point to "many, many, many, many, MANY years sitting in the Senate talking on and on" with other windbags about foreign policy, that doesn't really add up to "experience". Especially when what he was saying was almost always wrong -- in fact, spending years pontificating with other people like himself apparently has never lead him to get better ideas or become more experienced in his understanding of the RIGHT kinds of foreign policy decisions. Poke at him, jab him, and the real Joe Biden will come out on stage and on television for everyone watching the debates to see.

Women as Leaders, Women as Mothers, Women as Reformers, from the South (she must begin there first, with Huckabee at her side) to the Mid-West (with other GOP and Independent women political and business leaders), an uninterrupted narrative to drown-out the inevitable lies and talking-points Obama's campaign will spread and that will be spoon-fed to the MSM. Palin could end up being McCain's ace in the hole, and could be the deciding factor in this election, if the campaign does it right.