Palin Still at McCain’s Side, to Enthusiastic Crowds
By Elisabeth Bumiller

LEBANON, Ohio — Well, she’s still here.

The McCain campaign’s original plans had called for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the running mate who has turned Senator John McCain’s campaign events from issues seminars into rock concerts, to peel off from their joint appearances over the weekend and assume her own schedule.

But why mess with a good thing? As yet another rally showed this morning in this historic, heavily Republican, and made-for-a-campaign-commercial town outside Cincinnati, Mr. McCain’s crowds have mushroomed from hundreds to happily bellowing thousands. And judging from the women who turned up wearing “I (heart) Sarah’’ stickers in Lebanon this morning, it is safe to say they have not turned out to get a look at the 72-year-old veteran Washington senator who tops the ticket.

A pair of matching signs at the rally outside The Golden Lamb restaurant and hotel said it all: “America Respects John McCain’’ and “America Loves Sarah Palin.’’

In the same category of not tampering with something that works for you, neither Mr. McCain nor Ms. Palin have wandered from the stump speeches they’ve delivered since the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week.

At every stop. Ms. Palin is the 15-minute warm-up act with promises to change Washington and the story of how she put the governor’s jet on eBay, a huge crowd pleaser, (even though it didn’t sell on the huge Web site and the state later wound up taking a loss on it through a brokered deal).

This morning she was still talking about her opposition to “The Bridge to Nowhere,’’ even though there has been widespread reporting that Ms. Palin supported federal funding for the bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina, an Alaskan island of few inhabitants, before she opposed it.

Mr. Mccain then follows with a “drill, baby, drill’’ line in favor of offshore oil exploration as well as praise for the troop reinforcements, or surge, in Iraq. Notably, Mr. McCain made no mention this morning of President Bush’s announcement of 8,000 troop withdrawals by February 2009.

But Mr. McCain, who was on his 18th visit since April to Ohio (according to a local newspaper, The Oxford Press), made one thing clear to the crowd in this crucial battleground state. “We need your support,’’ he shouted out. “We need to win the state of Ohio! We need to win it!’’

After rallies with Mr. McCain in Pennsylvania later today and northern Virginia on Wednesday morning, Ms. Palin is finally scheduled to head home to Alaska on Wednesday, and at some point, she will assume a campaign schedule in the lower 48 independent of Mr. McCain. But nobody in the McCain campaign is saying when.