Palin Derangement Syndrome

There are some very good reasons to criticize Sarah Palin. None of them are listed here. Note to the nutroots: when even Roseanne Freaking Barr thinks you're going too far, you're going too far.

This should end the pregnancy "scandal," though I suppose Palin could have been wearing a fake belly. (I'm surprised Andrew Sullivan hasn't demanded to see her credit card receipts, to prove that she didn't buy one.) The Kossacks, wisely, are backing off, but Sully is still having a hard time letting go.

Yesterday I wrote that the Palin selection was going to backfire on McCain, but if it can drive the left this far around the bend, maybe the Republicans are on to something.

Damian P.

Update: a bombshell: Palin's oldest daughter is pregnant. Allahpundit thinks McCain knew, and that it might not hurt the campaign. It might actually make Palin look more sympathetic. On the other hand, it certainly doesn't help the case for abstinence-only sex education, which Palin supports...

Update II: McCain did know all along, according to the New York Post. Wouldn't it have been better to simply reveal this from the start?

Update III: this won't turn off the GOP base, accoring to Jeff Goldstein:

Many on the left will believe, quite mistakenly, that such an announcement is likely to weaken Palin’s support among “the hard-right conservative base”. But in fact, it will do no such thing — first, because the “hard-right conservative base” that liberal Democrats consistently invoke is largely a caricature that lives only in their minds and as a convenient trope in their rhetoric, from whence it can be trotted out as a foil and a boogeyman on cue; and second, because those energized over the choice of Palin include many disaffected libertarians and classical liberals who were, until the announcement of the Governor’s candidacy, set to either sit the election out, or else cast a protest vote for Bob Barr.

That the Palin family — by dint of ugly rumor mongering from “progressive activists” and a compliant left-leaning press that was cynically situating itself to pretend that these rumors “needed investigating” — was all but compelled to release information about their teenage daughter, is precisely the kind of thing that drives real civil libertarians and privacy advocates crazy, especially because the information has nothing whatever to do with Governor Palin’s candidacy, but instead invades the privacy (and quite possibly effects the “choice”) of a minor.

Update IV: according to Marc Ambinder, outside of McCain and a few of his senior staffers (and Palin, obviously), no one else in the campaign knew about this.

I'm also wondering, had it not been for the vicious internet rumours about Palin and her children - which gave the McCain camp an opening to break the news about Britol's pregnancy - when and how was the campaign going to deal with this? I don't see how it could have been kept quiet until after the election. More evidence that Palin was chosen on the fly?

Update V: for God's sake, Andrew, let it go.

Posted by damian at September 1, 2008 11:34 AM