I have an envelope sitting on my desk from Samaritan’s Purse, the organization founded by Franklin Graham; on the outside, the envelope references two of the many projects in which they’re involved:

Ministry in the Slums of Honduras

Feeding Families on the Alaska Frontier

Now, had you asked me in advance which of these two would get top billing, I would have figured from past experience that it would be Honduras, which sounds more exotic and a bigger deal.  Past fundraising appeals from Franklin Graham, whether for Samaritan’s Purse or for his father’s ministry, have featured evangelistic work in places like India for just that reason.  But no, Honduras is relegated to a small strip below the address window of the envelope.  Most of the front of the envelope is taken up with the mission to Alaska.

Why? My best guess in two words:  Sarah Palin.

Most of the right side of the front of the envelope, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the total space, is occupied by a picture of Graham standing next to Gov. Palin, both grinning (he looks very like his father in this shot), handing out a big box of food.  The picture dominates the envelope; the eye goes first to Graham, looking down into the box, then moves immediately to the Governor, because she’s dressed in red and so stands out from the rest of the colors in the picture.  The message in this one is very clear:  Franklin Graham is allied with Sarah Palin—they’re working together to minister to the people of Alaska.

Lest you think I’m overemphasizing this, I’m not.  Open the envelope and pull out the letter, the first thing you see is a different photo, filling the top half of the page, of Graham and Gov. Palin giving away another large box of food; the only major difference in composition is that Graham is significantly closer to the camera and therefore looms larger.  Gov. Palin is still dead-center in the shot, and her red still draws the eye.  The caption, at the top of the page, reads, “EMERGENCY FOOD:  Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and I delivered much-needed boxes of food to native families in the wilderness of western Alaska.”  In the text of the letter, the governor’s office is mentioned in the second paragraph, she’s mentioned by name—and praised in strong terms—in the third, and the entire fourth paragraph is her praise of Samaritan’s Purse.

In other words, one of the main things this letter wants you to take away is that Gov. Palin loves Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse, and that they’re allies in ministry.  This is, of course, a fundraising letter, so what this tells you is that Graham and his staff think that invoking her name is a good way to get people to give money—and that’s no small judgment, because these folks are past masters at this craft.  When most folks think of Billy Graham, they don’t think of him as a fundraiser, but all those crusades cost a great deal of money; who exactly was responsible for raising it initially I don’t know, but over the years, that’s one of the areas at which the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has gotten very, very good.  If they think Gov. Palin’s picture and imprimatur will help them raise money from the sort of folks who support them, they’re no doubt right.

Why does this matter?  Well, besides the fact that Samaritan’s Purse is a good ministry that will do a great deal of good work with that money, it also matters because those same folks make up a sizable chunk of the Republican base—and for that matter, the Blue Dog wing of Democratic voters, many of whom now self-identify as Palin Democrats.  The calculation of Franklin Graham and the development folks at Samaritan’s Purse with regard to Gov. Palin’s probable effect on their fundraising isn’t a political one, but it has political implications; at its root, it’s the same calculation Saxby Chambliss made when he invited Gov. Palin to be the closer for his campaign in the runoff election for Senate in Georgia:  Sarah Palin has big coattails.  She inspires a lot of people across this country, and if she supports someone or something, that will encourage many, many other folks to do the same—with votes, time, money, whatever.  Whether it’s “Vote for Saxby” or “give money to Samaritan’s Purse,” if she says it, millions of people take it a lot more seriously than if someone else says it.  That matters.  It matters a lot.

This also matters because it’s a good gauge that all the Democratic efforts to smear this woman aren’t really working.  Sure, they’re no doubt serving to fire up the Party faithful, but outside of the elite echo chambers where people pull out lines to convinced each other of things of which they’re both already convinced, when it comes to actually changing the minds of the citizenry, they aren’t taking root.  For all the work the Democrat smear machine is putting into breaking her image as someone of high morals and ethics, that’s clearly how most people in this country think of her, or else her support wouldn’t be this useful to an evangelical ministry like Samaritan’s Purse; they clearly don’t see her as damaged goods, or they wouldn’t be parading her support the way they are.

One might also point out that it matters because it means that Graham and his staff have a better feel for the political realities in this country right now, even without trying, than the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the various other party organs that exist inside that great echo chamber of the DC-NY corridor.  Were that not the case, the NRSC and NRCC would have hung on and waited for her to agree to attend their event (as she probably would have done) when she could do so at an appropriate point, rather than turning to Newt Gingrich as a speaker.

The bottom line is that this fundraising letter is just one more piece of evidence of Sarah Palin’s extraordinary appeal and connection to a vast swath of the American populace; Palin Power is a very real thing, and the folks at Samaritan’s Purse clearly judged it well worth their while to make a deliberate and intentional effort to tap into it.  (Which, since she supports and appreciates their efforts, was an entirely appropriate and valid thing for them to do.)  The sooner the national GOP starts doing so as well in an intelligent way—namely, without asking her to tap-dance to their tune for the privilege—the better off they’ll be.

Update:  When I posted this, I was so focused on the letter that I wasn’t thinking about the trip it recounts, so I didn’t link to the post Joseph Russo put up on that trip at the time.  That omission is now corrected.  It’s particularly significant because that post sparked people to donate to Samaritan’s Purse in honor of Gov. Palin, which probably contributed to their decision to highlight the trip.