Below The Beltway

At least one candidate for Congress is trying to tap into Sarah Palin’s appeal to help his campaign:

Well, that didn’t take long: Sarah Palin is now a big-time topic in down-ballot races.

State Rep. Jay Love, a Republican running in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, hit the airwaves yesterday tightly allied with the vice presidential candidacy of the Alaska governor. Love, who is in a tight race against Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright, hopes to tap into Palin’s popularity after her well-received acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

“I couldn’t wait to involve her in our campaign and publicly express my belief that she and Sen. McCain are the right people to lead this country. That is yet another difference between my opponent and me,” Love said in a statement. He declared himself the first congressional candidate to use images of Palin in a campaign commercial.

The ad shows Palin standing with McCain (R-Ariz.), the GOP presidential nominee, with Love narrating: “I’m supporting pro-lifers John McCain and Sarah Palin. My opponent isn’t.”

Here’s the ad:

Quite obviously, the ad is designed to tap in to Palin’s popularity with the GOP’s conservative base, which is undoubtedly a large part of the voting electorate in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District.

Love’s ad is a recognition of that, and it’s also a recognition of the fact that Republicans are now treating Sarah Palin as the same type of celebrity that they once criticized Barack Obama for being:

Now it’s Sarah Palin, a former small-town mayor with 21 months as governor, who is being followed like a rock star. And McCain aides love it. “Entertainment Tonight” was among the media contingents traveling to Alaska with her. She’s on the cover of People, Us Weekly and OK! magazines. Her overall favorable rating is about even with McCain and Obama at 58 percent, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. And some demographic segments of the population swoon over her even more. Among white women with children at home, her approval rating is 80 percent. Women have been coming into their local eyewear shops asking for those Palin glasses with the silver temple pieces.

And so it was that people pressed against each other to catch a glimpse of her, even from afar, at yesterday’s McCain-Palin rally at Van Dyck Park in Fairfax City, an elaborate showcase for the Alaska governor’s own brand of instant celebrity. It wasn’t exactly Obama in Berlin or at Denver’s Invesco Field, where the Democratic nominee drew unbelievable crowds and the contempt of his Republican opponents for being, well, extremely popular. But it was, by the yardstick of the Republican quest for the presidency, something extraordinary to see. So much so, that the McCain campaign hierarchy is now considering keeping the nominee and her running mate stumping together as a tag team.

The lines to gaze upon Sarah Palin formed early and stretched for more than a mile along Old Lee Highway, as thousands and thousands made their way to the park’s grassy hills, and chanted over and over: “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” Parents ditched work, and kids skipped school, and the souvenir hawkers did a brisk business working the lines with buttons like: “Hot chicks vote Republican.” Many came by foot, many others by shuttle bus from a nearby mall. The size of the crowd was difficult to determine. Police and the McCain campaign estimated it at 23,000.

Celebrity is its own momentum. “It was so cool watching all the people get in line,” said Vicki Hoffman, an artist who lives in the neighborhood. “It was like Woodstock.”

All this for a woman who has been the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee for 13 days and who has made a grand total of one major speech. If that’s not celebrity adulation, I don’t know what is.