As soon as I walked through the door of the old Mitchell’s Funeral Home on St. Mary’s Street, the tenor of the evening made itself known.

“Stop and Smell the Moose Dung,” read one sign. It was a not so thinly veiled jab at Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, she of Alaskan provenance.

I’d come to observe the latest meeting of GASP!, a newly formed Raleigh group whose oh-so-subtle acronym stands for Girlfriends Appalled about Sarah Palin.

In the beginning, there were 10 ladies who lunched. They dined at 18 Seaboard, near Peace College, and invented their catchy name.

The second week they met, 50 women came. By week five, when I showed up, more than 200 women – some with their elementary school-age daughters, some with tattoos, some in pumps and blazers as if they’d come straight from work -- were in attendance.

The standing-room-only crowd joined in a gospel-inspired chant, echoing the words “hope,” “leadership,” “economy” and “integrity” – all virtues they attributed to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

It turns out this group is far more interested in promoting Obama than dissing Palin. But Palin, mother of five, is what provoked them in the first place.

And that’s what interested me.

As women, we’ve waited a long time to watch one of our own ascend to power. Regardless of your politics, Hillary Clinton’s bid seemed to inspire pride in a Go, Girl, Go! kind of way. That’s not to say that Republican women planned to vote for her. Plenty of Democrats had their issues with her as well. But there did seem to be a palpable sense of excitement.

During the primary season, even my 3-year-old daughter was swept up by the wave.

In an early display of feminism, she urged me to vote for Hillary, “because she’s a girl, and you and me are girls. Girl power!”

But rather than unite women – which undoubtedly was Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s hope when he plucked Palin from national obscurity -- her addition to the ticket has stoked ire from liberals.

The “A” in GASP! could have stood for “Against.” Instead, the 18 Seaboard group chose the term “Appalled.” That’s a strong statement.

“The spirit of GASP! goes far beyond Sarah Palin herself,” the GASP! Web site, gasp08.com, explains. “But it was that one, profoundly cynical and insulting choice that hit a raw nerve for hundreds, probably thousands of women here in Wake County.”

Candace Steele, a stay-at-home mom who is part of a Chatham County McCain network, doesn’t get it.

“I don’t know where ‘cynical’ comes from. I don’t know where ‘insulting’ comes from,” Steele said. “Sarah Palin is very open and honest.”

Of course, beauty – and other attributes – are in the eye of the beholder.

So what exactly was motivating these women, many of them mothers, to turn out en masse on a school night, against one of their own?

“It’s not really women against another woman,” said Marty Baird, a Raleigh painter and mother of two. “Women are not sheep. We don’t just vote for another woman. It was a jaded, condescending choice to think women are just going to go to his side because he chose a woman."

In all actuality, Steele said, McCain’s plan may have worked except for one big stumbling block – Palin’s ardent anti-abortion beliefs.

“Let me give you my stance on this women’s rights thing,” Steele said. “It’s ‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ until you try to say something these women don’t agree with. Then it’s, ‘Shut up and get back in the kitchen.’

“All these women are spewing hatred and nastiness about her rather than just being proud and saying they really don’t agree with her.”

Be proud of Palin? It’s enough to make a GASP! proponent, um, gasp.

Toward the end of their mid-October meeting, the group’s organizers issued a plea for alcohol donations for an upcoming fundraiser.

“No Bud!” someone yelled, in an apparent reference to McCain’s wife, Cindy, whose family owns a Budweiser distributor.

As the meeting continued, someone circulated a tray loaded with wine in little plastic cups. In the back of the room, a cooler held reserves – and more than a few cans of Bud Lite.

Bonnie appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.