Cheers and jeers at Palin speech in Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse

Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse on Anchorage's 6th Avenue was heaving as Sarah Palin delivered her barnstorming speech to the Republican Convention thousands of miles away in St Paul, Minnesota. Grizzled boat operators rubbed shoulders with fishermen and big-game hunters in the rowdy bar as the Alaskan Governor's address beamed down to them from the bar's giant screens.

In rapt admiration sat Lisa Keller and her daughter, watching as the former aerobics teacher turned politician tore strips off Barack Obama. Being mayor of a small town had left her better qualified to run for vice-president than Mr Obama with his years as community organiser she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organiser except that you have actual responsibilities."

Plunging the knife right into the Democrat's heart, she went on: "In small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."

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Hannah Byrne looked unconvinced. "The Republicans have turned her into an attack machine," she said. "The very things that make her popular among Alaskans make her unsuitable to run for high office. She's just like one of us. The problem is that I don't want someone like me leading the country."

Sarah Palin is a popular Governor but not all Alaskans think she should be John McCain's running mate and many view his decision as a cynical political strategy. Jamison Murphy, a life-long Republican and a pilot who had just flown a cargo plane in from South Carolina, declared himself distinctly unimpressed. "They are making a terrible mistake with her," he said. "It's as if Karl Rove is still running the show and it's not going to work; she's hopeless."

Back on the screen, Ms Palin, was setting herself up as an outsider to Washington who had the backbone to clean up Alaska's notoriously corrupt politics. She introduced her husband, Todd (locally known as First Dude), to the convention, and her family of five, including her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and Bristol's hockey-playing fiancé Levi Johnston. She pointed out that her youngest, born only a few weeks ago, had Down's syndrome.

Sherry Simpson, an Alaskan writer who was also among the crowd at Humpy's, said: "So why did she cut the budget for helping unmarried mothers and then cut the money for developmental education for the disabled?"

For all her successes, the maverick Governor Palin remains an outsider to the Republican party of Alaska whose members she has attacked over the years. Which explains the stifled guffawing among their members as she described herself as a true conservative.

"I liked what she said, but I'm not sure I believe it, though," said David McGraw a Republican from her home town of Wasilla. "It would be a change from her past."

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