Tomorrow: Fun with the FBI and more recollections of Chicago ’68
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
John McCain wanted a surprise.
Surprise was what he got.
What a choice for his vice-presidential running mate. Until McCain’s announcement Friday, Sarah Palin was totally unknown outside Alaska, where she’s been governor 20 months and was briefly mayor of a microscopic town before that.
Did McCain sort of have a reputation for being a hothead and shooting from the head before Friday?
Now you can erase the “sort of.”
According to the New York Times on September 2, McCain and his vice-presidential nominee vetting team made no effort to call Republicans or indeed ANYONE in Alaska to find out what this woman is like.
Right off the bat, there were reports of the pending legislative investigation of her alleged abuse of power in trying to have a state trooper fired because he was in a nasty divorce with her sister.
Supposedly, McCain knew about the pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old daughter when he interviewed her the day before he announced her as his running-mate. But did he REALLY know? Or is he lying? And if he did know, why not mention it at the time? It could have been spun into something positive. Now it’s out of control. And too, why did Palin keep her own pregnancy secret till she was in her fifth month?
I mean, this is not some hockey mom, not even the mayor of a tiny town in a less-than-populous state. This is the governor of that state, and her own staff doesn’t know she’s pregnant? Is she obsessed with secrecy?
In itself, the pregnancies are no biggie. Really, so what? That’s life, right?
It’s the surprise element involved in the pregnancies, which involve an elected official, that makes you wonder. Why hold back? Her candidacy is dropped on the world as a national, not an Alaskan, story, and no doubt about it, McCain made a big splash. Got just what he wanted. Upstaged Barack Obama’s acceptance at the Democratic National Convention.
Then, three days later, following all kinds of crazy rumors, we are told Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Same question as with Palin’s own condition — why hold back?
The investigation into Palin, headed by a Democratic state senator and former prosecutor, is far more interesting, because it involves questions about her judgment and her willingness to abuse her position for revenge.
The questions really are not for Palin to answer. They are for McCain, who wants to be cast as a wise and judicious leader even though he has a reputation for being a raunch-mouth with a bad temper.
How much did McCain know, and when? If he knew, why not lay it out with all the rest of the background on Palin? Why wait for liberal bloggers to suggest Palin’s baby is actually her daughter’s and they’re covering it up? That story line played over the weekend, forcing McCain to correct it by having Palin release a statement.
Kind of knocked off kilter McCain’s convention script, already reeling from the onslaught of Hurricane Gustav and Republican fears of a replay of President Bush’s incompetence at dealing with disaster, or, well, anything.
Conservatives were patting themselves on the back over Palin, the gun-toting, hunting, anti-abortion candidate McCain chose over his own favorites, Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Got to please those right-wingers.
See where that got you, Johnny boy? Should have listened to your own drummer.
You’re up hothead alley now.
Got some explainin to do, pal.
Have at it.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Please explain to me how the left battled throughout the 1940s and 1950s against blacklists and guilt-by-association, and then fought for dignity and rights for unwed mothers — but now can attack the DAUGHTER (and soon-to-be granddaughter) of someone simply because she’s in the opposite party.
It appalls me that the media believes the daughter has no right to privacy, yet famously did so protecting every First Family until Billy Carter. From there on, only Republic daughters got the negative (ahem, “accurate”) coverage. Nobody saw negative coverage for daughters of any Dems. For *THEM* it was a double standard where news media reverted to playing safe.
Would we be equally fair to BOTH sides here, we would admit to the personal dfamage being done to the youngsters who simply made a mistake. It is heinous to malign and devastate by our prying.
“It’s fair,” the news media declares. If so, the backlash from how COMMON it is will definitely surprise you. Millions of Americans have had to face it, yet the news media acts as if only Republicans had ever invented out-of-wedlock pregnancy. This is on its very face hypocritical. Please name one daughter of any Democratic incumbent or candidate ever subjected to this detail of invasion.
The boy in Palin’s daughter’s case (however immature, judging by his now-deleted MySpace page) is still going to marry her — unless these jackals scare him off by their relentless nonstop idiocy. It would be tragic if the media prevented the right thing from being done and accepting his responsibility.
You do not blame the parent for the child, or vice versa. Dems will wind up losing, if they try this picking and choosing *WHOSE* family tree is fair game — and whose is not.
Should we judge Al Gore by the drug busts and so forth against Gore’s son? Should we judge Jimmy Carter by the antics of “Billy Beer,” his brother? Is Gerald Ford a monster because Betty did booze and drugs? Are the daughters of Barack Hussein Obama Jr. now a national scandal for their father having admitted in print to former drug use?
See how this stuff goes?
I say this tactic of personal smear is catastrophically bad for liberals to try, this cycle. Too many real families will sympathize with the Palins and decide the Dems have gone too far by this monstrous invasion of the Palin family’s right to privacy.
The honorable thing is to let the Palin family sort this out. Examine Palin all you like. She’s fair (ahem, *VERY* fair!) game — not her daughter and granddaughter.