The scrutiny will continue, as it always does, and the betting among leading Republicans is that Palin survives. None of the revelations so far rise to the level of disqualifying. And, while she has served less than a term as governor, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is the living embodiment of the fact that this election is less about experience than it is about change. Voters want a fresh approach, if not a fresh face, in Washington.

Inside the Republican Party, Palin delivers for McCain on two counts.

First, he needs to peel away a fraction of the independent-minded female vote trending toward Obama. Seizing on the so-called vetting controversy, McCain's campaign made a shrewd appeal to women by casting Palin as a victim of familiar circumstances.

"How do we balance our career, in her case a political career, with that of motherhood and continue to have a very fine family?" asked former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, one of dozens of women dispatched to media outlets by the McCain campaign.

McCain's wife, Cindy, said she was insulted by suggestions that the demands of caring for five children makes Palin a poor choice. "These questions would not be asked if she were a man," she said.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani toted his feminist talking points around to no fewer than five morning TV interviews.

"The scrutiny you are giving her is so darn unfair. It is really indecent," he told MSNBC's morning crew. "She is being asked questions like, can you, as a mother ... be vice president? Whoever asked a man?"

And so he went, from one TV camera to the next.

CBS: "Where are the feminists?"

ABC: "Give the woman a chance ... "

Fox News: "I'm at the point of (being) really angry."

And that's the point. McCain wants conservative voters, many of whom were lukewarm toward his candidacy, whipped into high dudgeon in defense of Palin, angry at the media and the unnamed liberal elites who are denounced by most every convention speaker.

Unfortunately for Democrats, they can't protest too much over McCain's use of the gender card — not after the race between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stirred sex and racial tensions.

It was regrettable that Democrats backing a black man and white woman "say things that veer off into the personal," Clinton said at the time. "We ought to keep this on issues."

Not likely.