Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, grabbed European headlines on Thursday with the focus either on her ideology or her gender.

“The Republicans hope to have found their Obama,” opined Le Monde, the left-of-centre French daily, following the mother of five’s rousing speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday. In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung greeted ”the rage from Wasilla [her home town]” as a woman who presented ”herself as a pugnacious and self-confident politician”.