If Barack Obama was serious about respecting women, he would have picked Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate.

That was Sarah Palin’s argument Tuesday when she addressed a crowd in southern Nevada. The Republican vice-presidential hopeful tried to woo women voters and show a little bit of her feminist side, essentially calling Obama a hypocrite who fails to treat women as equals.

"Our opponents think that they have the women’s vote all locked up, which is a little presumptuous, since only our side has a woman on the ticket," Palin said. "When the time came to make a decision, somehow Barack Obama just couldn’t bring himself to pick the woman who got 18 million votes.”

She painted Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE, as his running mate as yet another instance of a male boss passing over a qualified female: "The qualifications are there, but the promotion never comes."

The Alaska governor also said: “Why wasn’t Sen. Clinton even vetted by the Obama campaign? Why did it take 24 years – an entire generation – from the time that Geraldine Ferraro made her pioneering bid until the next time that a woman was asked to join a national ticket?”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the emphasis on women’s issues marked a departure from Palin’s usual rhetoric, perhaps in part because she was stumping in a part of the state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans and where Clinton handily beat Obama in the state’s January 19 Democratic primary caucuses.

"For the women in this audience and across the country, are you ready to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America?" Palin shouted to thunderous cheers. McCain officials say more than 7,000 people attended that event.

"Jerry the Plumber" showed up to the rally, as did "Wendy the Plumber’s Daughter," "Sandra the Homeschool Mom" and "Michael the Student."

They were among the ranks of what might now be called "Sarah’s Army" — conservative and proudly wearing that Average Joe, "pro-American" label — who lined up for blocks to cheer Palin on. The San Francisco Chronicle says there’s just something about Palin that continues to fuel her popularity among the conservative grassroots.

Joining Palin on stage were Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former member of the Democratic National Committee and former Clinton supporter; Elaine Lafferty, a former editor of Ms. magazine; and National Organization for Women officials from California and Oregon. NOW has officially endorsed Obama.

Palin also criticizes Obama’s treatment of his female employees, saying the women on his Senate staff "get just 83 cents for every dollar the men get  … You’ve got to ask, what is with that?”

The Review-Journal, however, notes that women on Obama’s staff don’t get less pay for the same work, according to Senate records.

"Sen. Obama has fought for equal pay for an equal day’s work, while Sen. McCain has suggested that women don’t get equal pay because they need more education and training," Obama campaign senior strategist Anita Dunn said in a statement. "While Sen. Obama has proposed a plan to help working women, the McCain-Palin campaign offers just more negative attacks and distortions."

Palin also called for "a tax code that doesn’t penalize working families," especially single mothers, and laws that provide women with opportunities. "Working mothers need an advocate, and they will have one when this working mother is working for all of you," she said.

The former mayor of Wasilla, AK, also compared a local woman, owner of La Madonna restaurant and a local GOP activist, to “Joe the Plumber,” the Ohio man who questioned Obama recently about his plans to raise taxes and became a conservative celebrity overnight.

Palin also said if McCain is elected to the White House, she would work for women across the globe.

“I intend to advance that creed in our own nation and beyond because across the world, there are still places where women are subjugated and persecuted as they were in Afghanistan, places where they’re bullied and brutalized and murdered in honor killings, places where women are sold like commodities in the nightmare world of the sex trade, and places where baby girls are unwelcome as a matter of state policy and their mothers are forced to have abortions,” Palin said.

“Now no one person, no one leader, can bring an end to all of those ills, to all of the injustices inflicting upon women, but I can promise you this, if I am elected, these women, too, will have an advocate and a defender in the 47th vice president of the United States.”

Palin is often seen as the McCain campaign’s attack dog – a usual role for vice-presidential candidates.

Speaking in Ohio Wednesday, she said: “I guess that the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now has gotta be Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”

Palin was referrinmettg to Biden’s weekend remarks, when he said Obama, if elected, was sure to be presented with an international crisis that would test his “mettle.”

Those remarks had Obama campaign surrogates trying to defend the comments and Obama. Even former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright jumped in on the defense.

“The real problem is that these warnings by Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama in the primary,” Palin said Wednesday, noting that Biden – who ran for president himself in the primary — formerly said Obama wasn’t up to the job and that “the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”