Republican VP choice and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was forced to admit today that her teen-age daughter was pregnant. Leave the kid alone. The children of candidates shouldn't be targets in a political campaign. The Obama campaign has stayed on the high road and kept clear of this story. Senator Obama knows that our politics should be better than this.
What should matter in a presidential campaign are the public policy decisions a candidate makes.
MSNBC reports:
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
I'm glad that Miss Palin lives in a country where she could make her own decision but worry deeply that John McCain and Sarah Palin want to take that right away for all other Americans.
Cecile Richards said this week:
“Senator McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a running mate makes clear that John McCain is completely out of touch on the issues that matter to American women. The last thing women need is a president — and vice president — who are prepared to turn back the clock on women's rights and repeal the protections of Roe v. Wade.
“The 2008 presidential election is about going forward, not backwards. It is about change, not about more of the same. But in choosing Governor Palin, Senator McCain has once again demonstrated that a McCain-Palin administration would be four more years of the same.
“According to an article in the Alaska Journal of Commerce (3/16/08), when Palin was running for lieutenant governor in 2002, she sent an e-mail to the Alaska Right to Life board saying she was as 'pro-life as any candidate can be.' She is also on the record stating that she is opposed to abortion even in the case of rape or incest.
“Women deserve a president who understands all their health care needs. There should be no question now that Barack Obama does and John McCain does not. John McCain may have a woman on the ticket, but he does not have the interests of women at heart. This selection may satisfy the right wing of the Republican Party, but it will further alienate mainstream women voters.”
UPDATE: Governor Palin also opposed sex education programs for teen-age students, according to Politico.com.
Governor Palin represents a choice outside the mainstream of America but makes the right-wing base of the Republican Party happy as can be. The Washington Post reports:
ST. PAUL, Minn., Aug. 31 -- Outside his evangelical church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sunday, David Chung was mobbed by friends and church members suddenly excited about the Republican ticket. "I had half a dozen people come up to me," said Chung, a delegate to the Republican National Convention. "It's a night-and-day change."
Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, reported the same reaction at his church in Atlanta to John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. "It's really extraordinary," Reed said.
For Christian conservatives, who watched with dismay as their issues were ignored or trivialized during the long Republican primary, the surprise addition to the GOP ticket of a woman raised in a Pentecostal church, who once described herself as "pro-life as any candidate can be," has transformed an election many had come to regard with indifference. Now Republicans such as Reed -- who describes the Palin selection as a "shot directly into the heart of the evangelical movement" -- hope the party will benefit in November from a crucial part of its base that is as energized as the young supporters of Democrat Barack Obama.
When people like Ralph Reed are happy you know the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Thankfully, Barack Obama and Joe Biden respect women and will do everything they can to both reduce the need for abortion and to protect the right of women to make their own reproductive health decisions.
