MOOSE-burger munching, bear-trapping, sharp shootin' ass-kicking US Republican VP nominee and mom-of-five Sarah Palin ought to disgust me.

I don't agree with hunting, shooting or killing things for fun. And I'm not keen on the fundamentalist creationism she's said to believe in, either.

When it comes to unplanned babies, like the one her 17-year-old daughter Bristol will soon give birth to, I'm pro-choice.

And that marriage she insists the girl will have to the bump's father, Levi the redneck, sounds like a train wreck, too.

As for that "breast-pump and BlackBerry" remark (she said she'd frequently be holding both of them following the birth in April of her Down's baby)...eeeewww.

But there's something about Sarah you don't get in politics today. She seems bright, she seems passionate. And she seems real.

No carefully crafted rags-to-riches sob story a la Michelle Obama. No orgy of familial nest-feathering a la Cherie Blair.

No need to wander round her town in a bullet-proof vest, like lily-livered Harriet Harman.

Sarah looks like she'd blast the hoodies' heads off first.

She seems more like us than the manufactured bunch of hypocritical harpies that politicians seem to think we should aspire to.

She's someone to whom stuff happens. And she seems to deal with it by putting her money and her mouth where her particular morals are.

Like many a bewildered parent, she's making the best of the "embarrassing pregnant teenage daughter with dodgy-looking boyfriend" scenario.

She gave birth to baby Trig knowing he would be Down's.

Her husband, Todd, has been done for drink-driving. And her eldest son, Track, is about to serve in Iraq.

Sarah says she's a "hockey mom" then quips: "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick!"

For hockey mom read ordinary mum - which means having to deal with life as it is, not as you'd wish it to be.

It means not abandoning your principles even if they seem wacko to those who don't agree.

I imagine hell would freeze over before Cherie Blair allowed one of her boys to serve in Iraq; it's for other people's sons to die on the altar of her husband's political ambitions.

Can you imagine Sarah Palin making a lip-trembling speech like the one we got from Cherie when she was caught using the services of a conman to help her get a discount on some flats?

Can you see her wandering around her home town with a bullet-proof vest and a posse of plods, like Harriet Harman?

Or having the gall to send her kid private while ticking off colleagues for using selective state schools, like Hackney MP Diane Abbott?

These women have all been hailed as mould-breaking glass-ceiling smashers, whose presence in public life should be considered a triumph. But few of us recognise ourselves in them or even like them.

We probably don't recognise Sarah Palin's pistol-packin', fundamentalist backwoods girl routine, either.

But we do recognise a hockey mom - because most mums are hockey moms too; battling on, catching the flak and keeping an eye on the old man and the children because we know it would fall apart without us. And that's why she's struck a chord.