Pailn’s performance may well have an impact far beyond this night, this convention and this campaign, though.

She wasn’t quite the surprise that Barack Obama was in 2004, when his star was born at the Democratic convention in Boston.

But, like Obama then, delegates left the building and Republicans at home headed to bed with unforgettable images of a fresh face and new force to be reckoned on the national political scene etched in their minds.