Out of curiosity, why aren’t you a Palin fan?
Because she’s utterly unqualified. Not a chance in the world she’d have been offered the VP if she was a man with identical qualifications, and the Republican Party is SUPPOSED to be against affirmative action tokenism. And if the Democrats had nominated a woman with a pregnant 17 year old daughter and a nursing infant, the same people who are celebrating Palin’s nomination would have been howling about her being an example of the sort of liberal feminists who are bringing about the downfall of American society by pretending that a high-powered career is perfectly compatible with motherhood, and that leaving the raising of their children to nannies is just fine.
And, no, Todd Palin has NOT been a stay-at-home dad, so even if mothers don’t really need to raise their children as long as the father fills the role instead, this family doesn’t cut it. As the NYT helpfully pointed out, when Sarah found out that she was a carrying a Down Syndrome baby, she didn’t tell her husband for several days, because he was out of town, out in the oil fields. Mom’s busy being governor, dad’s out in the oil fields not coming home at night, and Bristol is off in bed with her boyfriend, and not bothering to use contraception. And somehow, nobody managed to tell the other children prior to Trig’s birth that he had DS, leaving 14 year old Willow to notice his appearance right after he was born and ask if he had DS. Yeah, he made an unexpectedly early appearance, but supposedly Dad was there in the waiting room too, with the children . . . not sharing important info about the new baby with them.
Something is way off with this family. Shades of Keyes family, with the daughter who picked the middle of her father’s Senate campaign as the time to announce to the world that she’s a lesbian. If Palin really had such a devotion to “family values”, she’d notice that much more of her time and attention are needed at home, and not go galivanting off on the campaign trail, aiming for a job which will take up a huge amount of time if she does it justice, and also involve relocating the family just around the time her 17 year old gives birth to a baby sired by an immature 18 year old boy. If she ends up as VP, I fully expect to see 4 years of tabloid headlines emanating from her family.