By Patricia Murphy
citizenjanepolitics.com

Never one to stick to the script, John McCain put a big Arizona boot through the door that has been closed to Republican women until today. He has given the spot on the national Republican ticket to Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

I’ve followed Gov. Palin since her run for governor in 2006, when she busted up the oldest of the old-boy networks, namely the Alaska Republican Party. Palin, 44, ran against and unseated Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski in his own primary, clobbering him on a platform of fighting against corrupt Alaska politicians (including Murkowski, who named his own daughter to fill his Senate seat when he became governor.)

She then beat the former Democratic governor, Tony Knowles, in the general election to win the office.

While the Palin choice is surprising on many levels, including the important fact that she has no real foreign policy experience and governed a town of 7,500 before becoming governor less than two years ago, her fight against corruption mirrors McCain’s own. He has repeatedly gone after the Alaska delegation, including Frank Murkowsi, in his anti-pork crusade, and loves nothing more than ruffling some feathers among his GOP colleagues. Mission accomplished today, John McCain.

A key consideration with the Palin pick is whether she will bring over any of those 18 million Clinton Democrats who wanted to see their woman in the White House and were bitterly disappointed to see that chance slip away. Palin won’t move some of them. Many of the feminists who boosted Clinton were as fervently pro-choice as they were pro-Hillary, and the governor’s and John McCain’s opposition to abortion rights makes her a non-starter for that group.

But for the independent and swing-voting women who felt the pull of history with Clinton’s bid, they will feel at least a little of the same for Sarah Palin. They will also respond to an accomplished, intelligent woman telling her story on the 2008 national stage not as a potential first lady, but as a potential second-in-command.

The McCain camp knows that nearly half of Hillary Clinton’s supporters had not committed to Barack Obama as recently as last week, just as they surely know that George Bush lost the women’s vote in 2004 by just 3 percent.

Women will evaluate Palin on her policies, her experience and the character she reveals over the course of the campaign, just as they would judge any candidate. But in a year when women will again make up the majority of the electorate, and in a year when women at the Democratic convention carried signs that read, “We Shall not be Overcome,” McCain’s choice of Palin rearranges the dynamics of the race in a way that could prove crucial.

Since the day that women won the right to vote 88 years ago, they have only once had the chance to vote for a presidential ticket that included one of their own. Sarah Palin gives women that chance a second time, and many of them will take it.

Get more analysis from Patricia, click here.