ST. PAUL–In the minutes before a group of prominent Republican women held a "Republicans Strongly Defend Governor Palin’s Executive Experience" press conference at the RiverCentre this morning, a television tuned to FOX News showed John McCain disembarking from his campaign plane and greeting Sarah Palin and her family on the tarmac.

Palin waited on a greeting line for McCain by the plane’s steps. She smiled a broad smile and wore a beige skirt and jacket. McCain hugged her several times. Her 17-year-old daughter Bristol, whose pregnancy has prompted a tabloid media storm and also more serious questions about the intensity with which the McCain campaign vetted her mother, stood to Palin’s right. She was also wearing beige. McCain enthusiastically hugged her. Then he talked to her. Then he hugged her again. To Bristol’s right was her boyfriend Levi. He was clean-shaven. McCain touched Levi’s arm several times, and seemed to be testing the strength of his bicep. Then he reached down and grabbed Levi’s hand, which seemed rather limp, as if to teach him how to shake hands. The McCain family and Palin family then posed for pictures before parting ways. The McCains stepped onto their campaign bus and the Palins walked out of camera frame. Step one of the day’s complicated choreography of embracing Sarah Palin was complete.

Moments later, step two began at a press conference in Ballroom A. Former Governor Jane Swift of Massachusetts began by decrying the "outrageous smear campaign that many are launching against our vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin."

Citing her experience as a governor and mayor, she argued that Palin was "more prepared than Barack Obama to be the president of the United States." (Another speaker later said that Senator Obama had "never run anything." When asked if McCain had ever run anything, and if Palin’s experience was more valuable than McCain’s, Carly Fiorina, the chair of the R.N.C. Victory 2008 fund, said that he ran the "largest squadron in the Navy.")

Addressing the pregnancy story that has dominated much of the convention coverage, Swift said, "I’m sure just like me Governor Palin loves her children and I think we should leave it at that."

Fiorina blamed "sexism" for much, if not all, of the negative coverage of Palin, including assertions that she perhaps belonged to fringe groups in Alaska and the fact that "one of Senator Obama’s spokesmen has accused [Palin] as being a Nazi sympathizer." Asked later how that was evidence of sexism, Fiorina said it wasn’t.

As she has done often in the past, Fiorina tried to reach out to Hillary Clinton supporters who also felt wronged by what they characterized as the rampant sexism of the media. But this time the media seemed less willing to oblige what is emerging as a rather transparent McCain campaign tactic.

When asked why none of them defended Clinton against sexism during the primaries, Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said it was because "had we been more vocal, you all would have chosen not to have reported it."

There was a lot of question-dodging going on and when it became clear that the six Republican women on stage were seeking to fend off even valid questions about Palin’s experience by essentially calling them sexist and unfair, the press started asking more pointed questions.

One reporter asked if Lindsey Graham and other McCain advisers were sexist for suggesting that Palin would be able to safeguard American national security because she would have a strong infrastructure of McCain advisors to lean on. Fiorina offered a convoluted non-answer that ended up attacking Obama’s experience.

Another reporter asked, "Would you concede that Hillary Clinton has been a victim of sexism emanating from the Republican Party?"

"No, I would not concede that," Fiorina answered. The reporters in the briefing room chuckled.

"I would absolutely say Hillary Clinton has been subjected to sexism," she continued. "But, by the way if there are facts that you can show me I’d be delighted to see them. But I do not think that based on my experience and what I have seen, I do not think the Republican Party subjected her to sexism."

At another point, Blackburn said, "Let’s keep a discussion on the issues, let’s get away from the politics of personal destruction."

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