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Bristol Palin Pregnancy Should be Off Limits?
On Monday, 9/1 Reuters reported "The 17-year-old unmarried daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child". You now have Republican's tripping all over themselves saying how this is a story that involves a candidate's child and should not be the fodder of Presidential politics. This raises several questions in my mind.
(1) Couldn’t Sarah Palin have rebutted the rumors of her being the actual mother of her disabled child, without outing her and divulging that her daughter was currently pregnant?
(2) What kind of mother throws her own daughter under the bus like this, knowing how the national press was going to go after this story?
(3) If she was not aware that the national press would chase this story to the degree they have, doesn’t that say she is not ready for prime time politics?
(4) Could this have just been a convenient way of Republican’s getting the issue out and trying to switch the story to those mean liberal bloggers, instead of the obvious hypocritical contradictions in the “family values” party position?
(5) Why should this story be off limits now, when it wasn’t off limits to Sarah Palin, who used it to further her own political career?
Comments (3)
Yes, it is off limits, because it makes us look nasty, sexist and kinda ghoulish. Questioning her mothering and her decision-making about her family? Get the heck out of here with that stuff.
Ken Starr was a fucking disgrace, and I never want to go there again.
September 2, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it really questioning her mothering, or her political judgement if you are asking why she would use her daughter's situation as a springboard to resolving her own political problems. Seems to me this was Republicans being preemptive and getting the story out there, even while blaming Democrats for discussing it!
September 2, 2008 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
#4 is exactly right. They started this crap on right-wing blogs; and as soon as it grew the little-stumps of legs they got it out and blamed the blog-o-sphere and the media. There ain't no hiding a pregnancy so they needed a way to get it out(especially since it was already common knowledge in Wasilla). Obama has insulated himself very well - nobody is even discussing if he supports the chatter.
So there is no real reason to lay off in terms of strategy (as IF reader posts have a serious impact on the strategic arc of the campaign). I guess it's if you are all worried about getting warm-fuzzies from the local PC-patrol.
IMO, the best reason to lay off this stuff is because there isn't really much new to say about it - and the friggin issue is the topic of like 90%+ of reader posts ... and 99% of those are absolutely useless (seriously, what does this post add to the discussion???). It's becoming the equivalent to SPAM.
September 2, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
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