SIDEBAR: Old icon, new star: Double visions of Palin, Lincoln

By Frank Fuhrig Sep 4, 2008, 19:36 GMT

Washington - Christen Brown, a young Republican looking forward to voting in her first election, was upset when presidential candidate John McCain plucked Sarah Palin from obscurity to be his running mate.

Brown had never heard of the first-term Alaska governor, and wondered about McCain: 'Does he want to lose the election?'

But her friends had a different reaction. 'I was told the day of her nomination, that I look like her,' Brown said.

The 17-year-old, whose 18th birthday falls before the November 4 elections, became a celebrity of sorts at the Republican National Convention in St Paul, Minnesota after Palin electrified the centre- right party with a homespun but pugnacious manner in her prime-time debut Wednesday night.

In the concourse of the ice hockey arena housing the four-day political pageant, Brown found herself frequently surrounded by fellow convention-goers struck by her resemblance to the vice presidential nominee, who has become the newest rock star for Republican loyalists.

George Engelbach, a delegate from Missouri, tends to draw crowds even faster on the convention floor. The tall, bearded Midwesterner, his face weathered from a lifetime of farming, wears a black suit with tails and a top hat, instantly recognizable as the original Republican icon - president Abraham Lincoln, a founder of the anti-slavery party that lead the Union through the US Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

Engelbach, who raises cattle, wheat and soybeans, sits on numerous local government boards in his rural community, and was driven by his anti-abortion views to become active in Republican politics. The Lincoln portrayal came later.

'I grew a beard because of the weather. It was a very cold winter one year in the 1990s, and I quit shaving because my skin was so wind-burnt. People said, 'Hey, you look like Lincoln',' Engelbach said. 'And it just went from there.'

Brown, who is attending the convention as a student observer, insists that she has made little effort to encourage comparisons to Palin. She has a distinct facial resemblance and already wore her long hair up, in a similar twist, before Palin leapt to national prominence.

'I never really thought my chipmunk cheeks would come in handy,' said Brown, laughing.

Before Wednesday's speech, Brown made a single concession to feeding the resemblance, skipping the contact lenses she usually wears, and instead putting on her glasses, which happen to have a dark rim similar to Palin's eyewear.

The high school senior, who plans to study international relations and political science at prestigious Smith College in Massachusetts, had remained skeptical of Palin until hearing her speak.

'I saw in her what (McCain) promised we'd see in her,' Brown said.

She was riveted by Palin's plain-spoken style, with 'the little head tilt and the pauses.' Brown found Palin to be not just a fresh face but a new voice, 'nothing like the old rhetoric that even John McCain has.' She declared it 'the best speech I have ever seen in my short 17 years.'