Are (some) of us walking into a trap?

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2944356420080901

To rebut rumors, Palin says daughter, 17, pregnant
Mon Sep 1, 2008 5:36pm EDT
By Steve Holland

ST. PAUL (Reuters) - The 17-year-old 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.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the Palins' statement said.

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support," the Palins said.

The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple's privacy.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates," the statement concluded.

MCCAIN KNEW

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter's pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

In the short period since she was announced last Friday, Palin has helped to energize the Republican Party's conservative base, giving the McCain camp fresh energy going into the campaign for the November 4 election against Democrat Barack Obama.

McCain officials said the news of the daughter's pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" circulating on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin's child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

A senior McCain campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumors had not only been spread around liberal blog sites and partisan Democrats, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.

"The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama's name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their 'campaign of change,'" a senior aide said.

(Editing by Howard Goller)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

to nowhere?

McCain is unravelling nicely without our help.

We really don't need to distract attention away from that in order to have our two cents.
Like they say, when your opponent is digging themselves into a hole, don't stop them.

The M$M doesn't take bloggers seriously, anway. Sad but true.

This pregnancy would have come out either way. Babygate hit Palin on uniquely gender-based issues and I'm not in the least surprised they started here and at KoS.

Palin was chosen to be a red cape in front of Democrats' eyes, to get sexist attacks to start up all over again. And it worked like a charm.

Can we get back to Troopergate?

The entire selection of Palin is one of the most self-serving, cynical moves in American history...and a real slap at all the progress women have made over the past 40 years. They're trying to subvert all the hard work Hillary Clinton and others have done over the years to advance women in the American political system...replacing the glass ceiling with plexiglass. They're playing the American people as dupes...that since since Palin shares the body parts, she can also grab the mantle of a "trailblazer" a "Maverick"...and then turn it on its head.

The bigger issue here is Palin's ambitions and of putting her own career ahead of her family (a core GOOP weapon)...be it using political power to settle family scores to neglecting her special needs child by "handing the baby off" to others to care for while she not only goes back to work 3 days after delivering but now is disrupting the entire family by putting them in the media fishbowl and exploiting her handicapped child for sympathy and political gain.

The GOOP and the corporate media would love to set salacious here...climb into the panties and focus on the daughter rather than on a parent who is selfish and exploitive and the man who KNOWINGLY selected her in an attempt to hoodwink women voters and others into thinking he was "progressive" rather than exploitive and implusive himself.

Lets see how the corporate media frames this...that will show if the cape is still there and hopefully a clue to the Obama campaign as well how to proceede. The risk here is to so destroy Palin that it creates a meme that women still aren't ready for primetime...an making it look like it was the Democrats who made this happen.

Cheers...

Translation: If you go digging into Trig's parentage we will twist it so you look like debased gossip whores.

for doing McCain's vetting for him. He may not give a shit about who this woman is, but 'we the people' do.

No doubt this story will have incredible legs. The numb nuts RW will rally around the fact that the poor girl and her beau are "doing the right thing." In fairness, regardless of all of the other political aspects of this story, the child is being noble and will need the support of her family to get through this. Any and all "piling on" by the opposition will only serve to unnecessarily misdirect attention.

It is important at this point for the LW blogosphere to lay low, and now that the story is out, let events unfold and let the story tell itself--regardless of where the story ultimately goes. Much like the Edwards story, the Enquirers and their ilk will bird dog it and even the MSM will be paying attention.

Let the general public draw their own conclusions--particularly the independents and undecideds--about the hypocrisy of the wing nut positions on birth control, family values, parenthood and the like. If the story ends up going in a much stranger direction it will get there on its own now that the bird dogs are on it.

And please, while we all know Sarah Palin does not share the values of the vast majority of women, make no mistake, if our attacks continue to reflect some of the misogynist overtones we have seen in some quarters lately, we will have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. Our candidates are so far taking a high road approach and they are right.

...at some point before the election?

You know, mention how "this is proof that abstinence only doesn't work" or something similar.

The judgment of putting a person on the ticket so under-qualified with seemingly little or no vetting.

The judgment of Sarah Palin thinking that she is ready to be commander-in-chief and her judgment in accepting the VP nod knowing her 17-year old daughter's pregnancy will make headlines around the world.

this time all we have to do is Keep on blogging and watch the continuing implosion of the GOPerverts! The end is near! :nuke: :popcorn:

And I STILL don't buy the story of her flying for 8 hours, etc. AFTER her water broke, just to go to a small hospital in the middle of no where. They must think people are gullible.

I smelll salmon..dead salmon..
Mrs Moose has not come clean yet:)

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/focusedthe_sequel.html

Another week, another Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters--this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don't like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin...a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin's speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday---the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upwards when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere--which wasn't quite the truth, as we now know.

Then there was this, from a woman named Teresa, who went to the Democratic Convention as a Hillary delegate and is leaning toward voting for McCain--obviously the target audience for the Palin pick: "His age didn't really bother me until he picked Palin. What if he dies in office and leaves us with her as President? Also she leans toward the rigid right, and I always thought he was a moderate...You know, I change my mind almost every day, but right now I"m wondering where the John McCain I really liked in 2000 went, what happened to the moderate? This John McCain has the look of someone who is being manipulated--probably by Karl Rove."

Teresa still wasn't willing to vote for Obama, whom she considers too inexperienced, but she was clearly wavering. Afterwards Luntz, good Republican that he is, made the case that Palin could win all these people back with a good convention speech, but that seemed far-fetched to me. They really saw this pick as a gimmick--and one that reflected badly on John McCain's judgment.