"The electorate is not that different than it was," said Terry Nelson, a former Bush campaign strategist. "We're looking at the same kind of states that we were looking at in 2004."
Still, with McCain having trouble connecting with nonconservative voters, the gathering in St. Paul showed that the script has been tweaked.
Issues such as abortion and gay marriage that helped mobilize core conservatives in 2004 are being de-emphasized to avoid alienating moderate swing voters.
Davis, who represents a moderate district in northern Virginia, said Palin struck the right tone when she "defended small towns and the rural way of life. But you never heard her talk about abortion, the hot buttons that could turn these people off."
Some Republicans are urging McCain to focus more on the economy, an area that has been a weakness for him and the GOP. They believe that the troubled economy will make middle-class voters more open to the Republican opposition to tax increases.
In his speech, McCain glossed over social issues and focused on values such as honesty and selflessness. Palin folded some of the biggest questions about her record and biography into the campaign's new cultural narrative.
Her pregnant, unwed teenage daughter and her newborn infant with Down syndrome were presented as symbols of the travails of average families. She talked about the weight of economic policy in terms of her sister, who runs a gas station.
Criticism from Democrats over her resume -- as the mayor of tiny Wasilla and governor of Alaska for less than two years -- was waved off as carping from elites who don't respect her middle-class roots.
She said Obama and other Democrats "look down" on her experience as hometown mayor. But she ridiculed Obama's own resume -- likening his work as a young community organizer to that of a do-nothing, wide-eyed neophyte.
Palin reprised Obama's gaffe from his primary campaign when he was caught on tape speculating that working-class voters "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion . . . to explain their frustrations."
Said Palin: "In small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they're listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."
