Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: A 17 year old is not a political talking point
Politics is no a tea party. Sharp elbows are thrown and words are meant to inflict as much rhetorical and political damage as possible. All fair and predictable when a pol dips his/her toe in election waters; however, that same rule is not transferable to the families of politicians, especially underage children.
The media feeding frenzy over Gov. Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter’s pregnancy is unseemly. I would use more colorful language but we have rules here at 365. The young girl was not picked by John McCain to be the Republican vice president nominee and her story adds nothing to what voter need to know about Palin. How does this story inform on Palin’s stands on the Iraq War, the economy, terrorism, Afghanistan, and the multiple other issues a new administration will face come January.
Sure politicians put their families out there as props for why they deserve our vote; however, we as voters are not required to pay attention when pols scrub the family for the photo opp. No need to take the bait just because it’s offered.
I’ll give the last word to Democratic nominee Barack Obama who says it perfectly.:
“I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.”
I can’t stand Ms. Palin’s stand on any single social issue - not one! I wouldn’t vote for the woman on a bet.
However, attacking her daughter is as low as the GOP attacking Obama’s religion or patriotism - or name. Her daughter has nothing to do with this election. Hopefully, after realizing that she has dodged a bullet and thanked God that her daughter is having a baby and not AIDS treatments, Ms. Palin will rethink her adamant position on abstinence only education in public schools.
But her daughter shouldn’t be used as a weapon.
How is anyone attacking the daughter? Sounds like Gov. Palin’s stance on moral issues is being attacked with this pregnancy used as an example. She cannot cry foul after casting moral judgment on the rest of us for years.
I for one find Gov. Palin’s decisions very morally questionable. Its wrong to bring a child into the world that you know will have serious metal birth defects. Its wrong push a high school student into marriage and parenthood. Its wrong not to educate our children about safe sex.
Sorry if this forces us to mention her children, but these are issues at the forefront of her campaign. Anyhow, I doubt the tabloids will be racing up to Alaska to harass the children. They will survive this just fine.
Oh and was the age of the 17 yr old daughters partner released? I’m curious to know if a statchatory rape charge is being brushed aside for a marriage.
While Ms. Palin’s daughter is not running for office her mother IS running on a warped platform that includes abstinance and excludes sex education. I’m sure Mom never ever considered her God-following daughter could ever be having sex.
Hate to have to say it but let the overbreeding Republican woman have it. Tear her, her family, and her running mate down, be personal, dig up the dirt. We MUST defeat these people now. I’m not willing to risk letting her be in a position to stack the court with Conservative bible-thumping morons and set gay rights on hold for another 50 years. I’d rather they ruin her whole family than ruin the whole country. Tough luck.
I think it’s just another example of how the GOP sets itself up to be the party of the morally superior and surprise, surprise, they turn out to be just as morally deviant as those godless liberals. Pointing out that someone lives in a glass house and is throwing stones is not off limits. If it is, then prepare to lose. Again.
What is unseemly here, is giving Gov. Palin and the Republican party a pass regarding this revelation. If it is true that John McCain knew before he nominated her, and it was decided to leave this information out of the initial introduction, what that says about Republicans is volumes. Had this been about the Clinton’s, it would have been an abomination to ‘family values’ screamers. Rightwingers rant about ‘the institution of marriage’issue. Gays should be marry and or raise children and it is their business to stop it. However, as long as this child gets married everything is fine and by the way they are off limits because it is a ‘family matter’. Me thinks NOT. Ms. Palin, take your gun and go home and have some moose stew.
The daughter is not under attack, the mother is. As a mother, it is commendable that she is standing by her pregnant daughter. However, if the governor is setting an example of how to educate our kids, the daughter is an example of how well that type of education doesn’t work. And Sarah Palin should be called on that question. Not her daughter.
I agree that this young woman needs to have her privacy respected. But I do question Sarah Palin’s judgement in saying “yes” when she knew that this situation would quickly come to light and inevitably thrust her daughter (and the young father-to-be) into the spotlight. What does that say about Ms. Palin’s priorities?
Picture this. McCain-Palin are elected. McCain dies in office. Palin becomes president. The baby is sick, crying and keeping Palin up. The phone rings. The world is in crisis. Who gets her attention–the world or her baby. Is she a mother or a baby factory? Her family needs her. America needs a different Vice-President.
Yes , unfortuneately it is. First , it shows the what her family vales are , maybe in a sad waybut an actual factual way not like a swiftboating, or a tv ad showing Osama Ben Laden with a triple amputee war vet and insinuating that he is unpatriotic. But here are the real questions you need to ask youselt Would Karl Rove hesitate to use this, do you think America and the world can survive another 4 years of this and maybe worse(bomb, bomb,bomb, bomb Iran)?
The Republican party has brought this upon themselves by anointing themselves the Principled Principals of Moral Values and Abstinence-Only Education. My new fave is Sarah Palin photo as “the Hostess with the Mostest” of the Pro-Flag, Anti-Desecration Party flaunting her NRA assets in an American flag as a two-piece swimsuit. The only thing the GOP is good at is point fingers and demonizing everyone else to distract from their own evil and inadequacy while simultaneously expressing abject horror if anyone every holds them accountable to their own standards. Lest we forget, it was McCain who publicly called Chelsea Clinton “ugly” continuing that “her father was Janet Reno.” It appears that anything and everything if fair game as long as it’s targeted against his opponents, yet it is completely inappropriate to ask just how well the “abstinence only education” that Palin & McCain support is working for them now?
Let’s not forget, it was Sarah Palin herself that flung her daughter into the media meat grinder, just to cover herself. It’s a given that if you’re going to run on the platform of morality and family values, how you and your family conduct themselves is a legitimate gauge of your honesty.
Palin offered her child up to be savaged by the media. Put the blame where it belongs.
I just can’t believe that the Republican party would allow her to be nominated as Veep. In the few days after McCain announced her as his choice, she has had no less then two scandalous reports on her, and who is to say there are not more ethical and “moral” skeletons in her closet.
As a Democrat, I hope she stays on the ticket and drags it down. But I can’t help but be horrified that the lemmings –(clears throat)– I mean delegates of the republican party would let her be nominated.
It just makes me want to fight harder to make sure that someone with her backwards morals doesn’t make it to the white house.
Ms. Palin’s pregnant daughter is at least ALLOWED to get married, unlike the formerly pregnant, unwed daughter of the current Vice President.
To all you who protest the media’s treatment of her, please remember, the GOP is the party that prides (you should pardon the expression) itself for being the “family values” crowd and yet would prevent us from ever forming families.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Sarah Palin belongs to the party that makes “family values” (especially sanctity of marriage) one of its core issues, so the voters deserve to know just how those values play out in a candidate’s own family. Moreover, just as the Ancient Greeks, the fathers of democracy, believed, how one governs one’s family, one’s city, and one’s state are all intertwined and all part of the same skill-set. I resist drawing the kind of mutually exclusive dichotomy you want to draw between a politician’s public and private life. The two are inextricably intertwined.