"This is great!...It really shows courage!...What's the big deal?" Take a spin around right-wing radio and you'll hear the talking heads tripping over themselves to minimize the significance--or better yet, unconvincingly celebrate--the news that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol is five months pregnant. Adding insult to injury, Palin likely lied about it all to Sen. John McCain when she was being vetted as his vice-presidential nominee. This ticket is coming apart at the seams. It was McCain's birthday last week, but he gave the Democrats one giant gift in Palin. Indeed, Grandma Sarah's the new Harriet Miers. Watch this appointment implode just like that one infamously did in January 2007.
For several days now Palin's selection as McCain's running mate has created a shitstorm in both Republican and Democratic circles. A self-proclaimed "hockey mom,' Palin's less-than-impressive resume consists of six years as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska--population 6500--four years on the Wasilla City Council, and 1 1/2 years as the state's Governor. Clearly, her appointment is purely for political purposes, as she is far from being the best candidate McCain could've chosen. He simply, and foolheartedly, expects she will attract an appreciable chunk of Sen. Hillary Clinton's 18-million disaffected supporters, most of them female. It's foolish to think Clinton's supporters will rush to the polls to vote for the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-evolution, gun-slinging NRA member who can skin a carcass with the best of 'em. Ideologically, she has zero in common with Sen. Clinton. In fact, she's Mike Huckabee with tits.
The major issue here is McCain's age, 72, and his three bouts with cancer, which puts Palin but a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. A testy McCain said last week that she's more qualified than Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats' nominee, to be president. Unlike Palin, "he's never had one day of executive experience." Well Senator, neither have you. Are you suggesting that being a Governor is the prerequisite now for White House service?
And now comes the teen pregnancy scandal, which is certain to be a colossal distraction to the McCain/Palin campaign. Will her daughter's situation undercut her position as a staunch advocate of conservative family values? Will it once again remind everyone of the inherent hypocrisy of so many heretofore publicly-humiliated Republicans, many of them evangelical religious zealots, who had sanctimoniously preached to the rest of us how we should morally live our lives yet under their own roof it's Sin City. Another tragic irony of this religious fanaticism is that this is the sort of thing that happens when you live a socially-repressed life and try to insulate your kids from knowledge; from sex-education.
So now the Hannity's, Limbaugh's, Levin's, Wilkow's and the legion of McCain's surrogates are pretending like this is some sort of character-building badge of honor non-issue for Grandma Sarah. But underneath the surface, Republicans must be fuming. Livid that Grandpa John's latest demonstration of maverickness just might've cost them the election. Stay tuned. The Palin fun's only just beginning....