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Can This Get Any Weirder?

September 1st, 2008
By ELROD

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Sarah Palin today announced that her 17-year old daughter Bristol is pregnant. She will marry the father.

Word comes from McCain sources that the family announced this in response to rumors that Palin’s son Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome, was actually Bristol’s baby. Those rumors have been effectively quashed by this photo taken in April, just before Trig’s birth.

There are still many questions swirling about Sarah Palin’s decision to board an 8-hour flight from Texas to Alaska AFTER her water broke. She was one month premature with a special-needs child and risked infection and a dangerous airborne delivery by going back to Alaska and not having the baby in Dallas. Anecdotal conversations I’ve had with women show horror at the prospect of getting on an airplane after leaking amniotic fluid late in pregnancy. Who would do that? Isn’t that reckless?

All of this comes on the heels of an ongoing investigation into Sarah Palin’s potential abuse of power for firing the Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for not removing Palin’s ex-brother-in-law from the police force. Mike Wooten, the trooper in question, had been abusing Sarah’s sister and was embroiled in a nasty custody dispute.

Each of these stories in isolation would be noteworthy and a bit odd. But taken together they portray a family in a great deal of crisis - a special-needs infant, a sister and brother-in-law embroiled in a conflict that could result in legal charges filed against Governor Palin for abuse of power, and now a teenage pregnancy, made public apparently to deflect attention paid to the bizarre circumstances of Trig’s birth.

I have no idea what the political ramifications of all this are. I suppose many people will just feel more sympathy for a family that is all too “real.” I know that I feel sympathy for them. But the thought that John McCain knew all of this and decided to promote her from Alaska Governor to a heartbeat away from the Presidency is quite stunning. What does it say about McCain’s judgment? Die he really vet her? Or did he figure that our tabloid-obsessed nation would somehow not care about these things? Or maybe he calculated that these stories would just make her more authentic and sympathetic. Who knows?

All I can say is that this campaign has gotten truly bizarre. Is there any modern precedent for this? GOP officials are supposedly a bit stunned at the Bristol pregnancy. Does this factor in to a “family values” campaign in some way? As a decidedly non-family-values voter I have no idea how to calculate it.



This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Downs Syndrome, Sarah Palin, Scandals, At TMV, 2008 Elections, John McCain, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 47 Comments

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    There's an old saying:

    "Those in glass houses should not throw stones".

    To me it seems like Sarah Palin's family is like just about any family I've ever heard of, complete with messy relationships and human errors. The public will judge how "horrible" of a candidate she is based on these things.

    Don't look for her honesty to be a bad thing. The fact that she offered it up for what it was might actually work in her favor.

    Obama needs to tread very lightly when it comes to criticizing scandals in other candidates...Very lightly...
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    Karl Rove, you magnificent bastard, I know you are behind this.

    Who else but a genius could have not only picked a beauty queen, soccer mom, pro-energy snowmobiling governor, but then arrange to get her daughter pregnant in the same week.

    The largest demographic of swing voters is lower income single mothers, and if Sarah didn’t have their vote before, she sure does now.

    How does this guy do it?
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    What Joe Scarborough really thinks about Palin Nomination!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTbsbeY5k5k

    Let's see how they spin it this week.
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    "But taken together they portray a family in a great deal of crisis - a special-needs infant, a sister and brother-in-law embroiled in a conflict that could result in legal charges filed against Governor Palin for abuse of power...."

    I wonder if the Palins knew what they were getting themselves into with Sarah accepting the VP nomination. Not just her, but her husband.... I see that he is now going to be a "stay at home Dad" which is great, but of course since this is politics I can't help but wonder if they've been coaxed into saying this.... Mr. Palin, with his multiple cross-racing championships on snow mobiles, etc. seems too much of a "frontiersman" than a stay at home Dad.... He (and his wife) obviously did not have enough supervision of their daughter.... If Sarah Palin can't even supervise her own family and keep them out of trouble, then I wonder how she's supposed to be VP and supervise world affairs.

    Even if Sarah had the experience, she is clearly not in a place in her life, especially with a special needs newborn, where she can devote her attention to the duties of VP (or as president if something were to happen to McCain). It's one thing to be a working mom and take an afternoon off for teachers' meetings or go to the hospital to attend to the needs of your family. It's another thing to be VP (or president) of the world's only superpower in two separate wars with threats of further conflicts arising.
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    If we can only get Obama or Biden to say on television what Stockboy SF wrote, the republicans would win every election for the next 50 years.
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    Hi Sil

    Is this "lightly" enough for you (Obama's position on Palin's pregnant daughter)?
    From ABC News:

    At a brief press availability in Monroe, Mich., ABC News asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., if he had any response to Gov. Sarah Palin's statement that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant.

    "Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits," Obama said, "and people's children are especially off limits.

    "This shouldn't be part of our politics," he continued, "It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

    "And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," he said. "You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits."

    Asked about the insinuation from the McCain campaign that the liberal bloggers trafficking in rumors about Palin write for websites that mention Obama, the senator said, "I'm offended by that."

    The Democratic presidential nominee said, "There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us. I hope I am as clear as can be – so in case I’m not, let me repeat: We don't go after people's families, we don't get them involved in the politics. It's not appropriate and it's not relevant."

    Concluded Obama before getting on his campaign bus headed to Milwaukee, Wisc., "Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they'd be fired."
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    I'm with Barack.
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    Oh well, I guess I’ll just wait for Biden in one of his famously “unguarded” moments.
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    Bristol Palin should REALLY be off limits. Poor girl. My reaction is what a horrible thing to have a politician as a mother. Poor Bristol. Poor Edwards' children. Poor Chelsea.... Thankfully, Sen. Obama may have some effect on out of control scandal mongering. Or maybe not. sigh.