Sarah Palin provided a jolt of energy and enthusiasm to the Republican Party Wednesday night as she fired up the convention crowd in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The woman picked by Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, to be his vice-presidential running mate told the world about her life, her experience and her family — but she also took shots at Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE.

CNN.com reports that the Alaska governor’s neighbors saluted their hometown-girl hockey mom as she made history in accepting the Republican nomination.

At Tailgaters Sports Bar and Grill in Wasilla, AK, Palin supporters tried on "Palin and McCain" T-shirts and ate buffalo wings as they discussed the attributes that they said made the former Wasilla mayor the ideal candidate for vice president.

"She’s a regular, hard-working individual with integrity, honesty to her credit. That doesn’t make her unique, but it makes her qualified," Martin Buser, four-time winner of the Iditarod dogsled race and longtime Wasilla resident, told CNN. "She’s just honest; she has good intentions in everything she does … Here we judge people by what they do."

Women for Palin

Palin was also cheered by local Republican woman.

"I was glued to the TV," Oline Shaw, a 58-year-old woman who has worked in male-dominated fields most of her life and had never heard of Palin before she was picked by McCain, told The Seattle Times. "I had to fight through the ’70s to get to the point where I am now. It’s so exciting. It’s about time."

Shaw was one of about 40 people, mostly women, who gathered Wednesday night at the McCain campaign’s King County headquarters in Bellevue, WA, to watch Palin. The Times reports that the viewers were particularly supportive of Palin’s remarks about energy independence, advocacy for people with special needs and the war in Iraq. They relished Palin’s comments deriding Obama’s experience as a community organizer.

"She has the Alaska pioneer woman attitude to go out in the wild and make a way for herself," said Robin Poe, a 53-year-old Bellevue resident and Army veteran. "I think she’s going to resonate with the working man."

Women for McCain groups also met at McCain campaign headquarters in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, to watch Palin’s speech and to work phone banks.

"Shrill and Sarcastic" or Sexist?

But not everyone was enamored by the mother of five. Some in the media and political corners are criticizing her for being too sarcastic in referencing Obama and Biden, and for sending too many verbal darts their way.

"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in an e-mail to supporters.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, called her remarks "shrill and sarcastic." Palin took Reid to task for saying the leader of the "do-nothing Senate can’t stand" McCain because he "can’t stand up to John McCain."

"Anyone who knows Senator Reid knows he never backs down when he’s fighting for what’s right and that he always stands up to John McCain when he is wrong," Reid spokesman Jim Manley told CNN. "Shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don’t change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed bush-Cheney policies."

Former aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are backing Palin, saying much of the criticism of her is sexist – an argument the McCain campaign has been making for the past week.