We've heard all this before, during the 2008 presidential campaign when Palin credited Title IX for her opportunities on the basketball court, used the honorific Ms. and embraced the identity of feminist at least for a while in her interview with CBS News' Katie Couric.

Back then, I was intrigued at how this would play with her conservative Christian supporters, since so many conservative evangelicals believe women's submission to men is theologically given. So I interviewed young activists at the Values Voters Summit, including staff of the Susan B. Anthony List who eventually launched Team Sarah, the political community supporting Palin's vision and perhaps her run for the presidency in 2012.  

What I found was some discomfort with Palin's membership in Feminists for Life but in general great enthusiasm among the younger generation especially, who said they'd been waiting for someone like Palin for a long time.

I also stumbled on a redefinition of "traditional womanhood." Where once it meant being submissive to your husband and a stay at home mom, the "values voter" base now use the phrase to mean a "Christian" woman who embraces the heterosexual nuclear family. She can work and have kids, be in public life, whatever, but she is a member of the conservative Christian tribe.

In an era where the "quiverfull" Christians are promoting a so-called "biblical womanhood" that has women submitting to their husband in all things, including voting, "traditional womanhood" becomes a liberated breath of fresh air by contrast.

And many of those I interviewed knew what was at stake; they needed Palin as a credible force in their movement that opposed that tendency.

Emily Buchanan, the young executive director of the Susan B. Anthony List, said,

She embodies the American woman. She's independent. She speaks her mind. But she also embodies the traditional values that are so important to Americans.

For such a long time, the powerful women in Washington were all touting prochoice as prowoman. People like Senator Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were the role models...To have a traditional woman, it's something people can relate to.

As I wrote, "Putting Palin in the political mix is either crystallizing new sentiments, or surfacing ones barely visible before."

And it wasn't only the women. Another, male, Susan B. Anthony staffer said,

There's a great picture of her with her son in a sling signing a law," adding, "My mother is not usually involved in the political process and now she is."

I observed,

To these activists, Palin is "normal," a word heard as often as "traditional." She wears makeup. She is pretty. She is an evangelical Christian. She is anti-abortion. She is also white. That is normal within the sphere of these conservatives. But "traditional" for these young people is no longer a woman who stays home with the children while the husband works, or who submits to her husband. Todd Palin's active domestic role is not so unusual--on stage at the Values Voters conference was Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, whose husband, a retired military man, is well known in this community for taking care of their child who was born with Down syndrome.

Jessica Valenti's snide dismissal of any conservatives embracing any kind of feminism ignores feminist history. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the Minute Women, a McCarthyite anticommunist group of the 1950s launched by Vivian Kellems, a National Woman's Party member and businesswoman. And as historians of the NWP have noted, after its suffrage era heyday it was filled with privileged, free market loving, New Deal hating feminists who wanted equal rights with men and personal freedom but not much more than that.

That Sarah Palin, a canny communicator, is using feminist language is interesting. And that she is creating enthusiasm and support among conservative Christians with it is equally interesting and worth exploring, not simply denouncing, even in the name of passionate feminism.