By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff

Annette Kreitzer, an Alaska delegate who works for the state’s Department of Administration, applauded a television screen in the Minneapolis Convention Center when John McCain named her boss, Gov. Sarah Palin , to his ticket.

Kreitzer was at a meeting of the GOP Convention’s Rules Committee, and, to her surprise, the assembled delegates from around the country were also bursting with enthusiasm.

“Alaska was up front . . . I turned around to see everyone behind me had stood up,” Kreitzer said. “That was pretty emotional.”

Around the corner, in the room housing the Credentials Committee, the same scene was playing out.

“We all stood up and gave her a standing ovation to the screen,” said Joanne Voorhees, a former state representative from Wyoming, Mich.

Even as the GOP was making plans on Sunday to truncate its convention, Republican officials bubbled about McCain’s new running mate. They said she will energize grassroots Republican voters, touted her appeal to independent suburban “hockey moms,” and even claimed that Alaska’s position between Canada and Russia qualifies her as a foreign policy expert.

“I met her in Juneau last year and was impressed with her then. Because her state borders two countries she has a different perspective that the lower 48 doesn’t get,” said John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Palin has tugged at the conservative heartstrings that McCain could never get a handle on.

“This is a woman who shored up McCain’s base overnight and brought everyone home,” Rep. Jack Kingston said in a Sunday telephone interview from Georgia.”

Kingston said the history-making pick of the Republican Party’s first female vice presidential candidate -- on the Democratic side, Geraldine Ferraro ran for the job in 1984 -- gives previously ambivalent GOP voters a reason to be excited about their ticket just as many Democrats have been energized by the candidacy of Barack Obama , the first African American ever nominated for president by a major party.

“Now we have our own excitement,” Kingston said. “It’s modernized the party 20 years.”

Most Republicans acknowledge that it is Palin’s image as a reformer, her appeal as a working mother and her ruggedness -- not her foreign policy acumen -- that has made her an instant cult hero among conservatives.

“Not only can she juggle baby bottles and a Blackberry, but she shoots trap,” said Rex Shattuck, an Alaska delegate who works in the state legislature and has been on the opposite end of Palin on some policy battles.