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Opinion: <em>The </em>Sarah Palin arrives at a GOP convention, eager to meet the new star

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Ladies and gentlemen, the Governor is in the house.

Sarah Palin, Alaska’s governor but John McCain’s new vice presidential partner, has arrived in St. Paul for the abbreviated Republican National Convention, where the selection of the relatively unknown 44-year-old mother of five has energized thousands of Republicans gathered for the GOP’s first nomination of a female national candidate since its founding in 1854.

Not to mention easily erased any media mention of that celebratory night in Denver’s Invesco Field -- when was it? -- a month ago.

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It won’t be a normal first day for the quadrennial party event. In deference to the immense circle of tumultuous tropical winds now known as Gustav, McCain canceled all first-day convention events save a perfunctory opening.

He said it was a time for Americans to be Americans together, not Republicans or Democrats. If Nature serves you a lemon, make lemonade.

We’ll see what the rest of the week brings for scheduled events. For political purposes, to be honest, no one will say this out loud except the Ticket, but not having President Bush present to dominate a night’s national TV coverage of McCain’s convention is a fortunate byproduct of the schedule change.

But after a day of campaigning down south and in the Midwest with McCain, Palin arrived in St. Paul late last night with Cindy McCain, along with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Palin has no public events penciled in for today. But the presidential nominee’s wife and sons are scheduled to have breakfast with the delegation of the possibly about-to-be storm-battered state of Louisiana. And wouldn’t that be a swell time to bring along a surprise guest for a formal introduction?

We’re just saying. (UPDATE: And we were wrong.)

According to Maria Comella, the pre-picked press secretary for Palin who used to work for a one-time Republican front-runner named Rudy Giuliani, Palin will spend the day in a mix of briefings, meetings with delegates and other governors and working on her acceptance speech for Wednesday night.

With her husband, Todd, and four of their five children en route to Alaska, Palin has reportedly already put some words to paper. Or into a laptop. Whatever.

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Her fifth ‘child,’ Track, who’s 19, is in the Army preparing for deployment to Iraq in two weeks while his mom prepares to deploy to political battleground states back home, with a special emphasis on the West, if our guess is right.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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