The Next Stunt
The McCain campaign is not a campaign of ideas. It is not a campaign based on a ideology. It is not a campaign based on a strategy. All the McCain campaign is is a series of panicked stunts. Now that Barack Obama has won the first debate, a debate that John McCain should have and must have won, considering it will be the only one focused on foreign policy, and now that Barack Obama has taken a significant lead in all four of the tracking polls (50-43, 50-42, 47-42, and 50-44), we can expect John McCain to wet his Depends and panic.
So we must get ready for the next stunt.
Looks like it might be this:
Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”
How sad that the McCain campaign has been reduced to hoping for a shotgun wedding of an underaged and pregnant girl. I have two thoughts on this.
First, when the news broke that Bristol Palin was pregnant, conservatives across this land were loudly condemning Democrats for taking political advantage of the unfortunate circumstances that have befallen the young Bristol. If one photograph of Bristol Palin at her coming wedding is taken and used by the McCain campaign, how is that not taking political advantage of the unfortunate circumstances that have befallen the young Bristol?
Second, if Sarah Palin allows this, I have to say, she must then be considered a horrible and abusive parent. Indeed, can anyone say that this shotgun wedding and all the attendant publicity forced upon her by her mother’s outrageous candidacy for the Vice Presidency are in the best interest of the Bristol? I fear that Bristol Palin’s life is now ruined, all because of her mother’s ambition to be Vice President. It is bad enough to make a mistake and get pregnant at 17. But then, in order to satisfy the conservative base, Bristol Palin is to be made to suffer through what is literally a shotgun wedding, with photos splashed across the globe.
Indeed, I already think Sarah’s status as a good parent is in doubt already, what with her accepting the Vice Presidential nomination knowing her teenage daughter was pregnant and with the struggles and challenges facing the family in raising a down-syndrome child. If she uses her daughter’s wedding to boast her political career, then her status will be clinched.
Free Levi!!
Criminy — what happened to a respectful campaign? McCain seems to be running his as an audition for the Jerry Springer Show.
If this doesn’t work they are going to announce that 13 year old Willow is pregnant.
If THAT doesn’t work they are going to announce that Bristol’s fetus is pregnant.
Don’t ask what they are going to do if that doesn’t work.
“Indeed, I already think Sarah’s status as a good parent is in doubt already, what with her accepting the Vice Presidential nomination knowing her teenage daughter was pregnant and with the struggles and challenges facing the family in raising a down-syndrome child”
Would these questions be asked if the VP nominee was a man? Of course not.
It seems Gov Palin’s family has some challenges ahead. Unless you hit the genetic lottery life is a struggle so let her and her family live the life they want to live. I hope her daughter’s pregnancy goes well.
“Would these questions be asked if the VP nominee was a man?”
Of course they would, Mike. Particularly if she was a Democrat. Why do you have such a double standard? And wassup with Sarah hanging out at bars and steak shops at night? I guess her baby is only good for a stage prop.
I doubt that a man as incompetent as Palin with a pregnant teenage daughter and a 4 mos old baby would be nominated for VP by any sensible party.
I’d love to let her live the life she wants to live, but not as VP.
Any politician using the wedding of their teenager as a political stunt would come in for the same criticism. Can the McCain campaign not see this is a REALLY BAD IDEA? It already felt a little ooky when they brought the boyfriend in for the convention.
I have two publishable thoughts:
I give ’em two kids and five years before the divorce.
If the Palin family exploits the wedding in the same way they exploited their Down’s Syndrome son (cover of People) then shame (and maybe hell and damnation) on them.
There is a whole freaking TV show about this already.
God forbid that Ike should divorce her daughter she will ship his ass to Russia which she can see from her front porch