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Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin won high marks in the US press Thursday for her performance at the Republican convention, with commentators saying she could no longer be dismissed as a political amateur after electrifying an audience of party faithful.
   
The Republicans, wrote a Wall Street Journal columnist, may have found their own Margaret Thatcher while the New York Post hailed Palin as a fighter and urged her on: "You go, girl."
   
Under the headline "She shoots! She scores!" Tom Shales of the Washington Post said Wednesday's speech by John McCain's surprise vice presidential pick was a political bull's eye even if it lacked eloquence.
   
"If the Republicans win the presidential election in November, it may well be said that they won it last night -- the night that John McCain's brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star," Shales wrote.
   
"To those in the hall and probably to millions watching at home, she came across as genuine and down-to-earth, a self-described 'hockey mom' whose confidence and bravado were not exactly ingratiating but were somehow persuasive."
   
With the stakes high and the McCain campaign facing questions about her thin resume and pregnant teenage daughter, Palin rose to the occasion, he said.
   
"She proved herself in the great arena; that's what counts politically. Nobody could watch that speech and still consider her a joke, no matter how flimsy her credentials and qualifications may seem on paper."
   
In a reference to her feisty jabs at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the New York Daily News ran the headline: "Hockey mom drops gloves."
   
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal said that by picking Palin, McCain had ushered in a promising new face for the conservative cause.
   
"Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher," wrote Fund.
   
"If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure."
   
Palin achieved several objectives in her speech, Fund wrote. She introduced herself to American voters in a compelling way, sold McCain as a genuine hero, deflected criticism against her as an attack on small-town, suburban values and "skewered Obama with gusto but without meanness."
   
He added: "America has just learned why Mrs. Palin enjoys the highest approval ratings of any governor in America."