Leftist sleaze-mongering about Palin’s baby

One of the more bizarre and perverse attacks from the panicked lefties on Sarah Palin is that the mentally-handicapped baby is her daughter’s, not her own. This originates in the fever swamp of the Daily Kos blog and has metastasized to other sites of liberal-left dementia. Self-proclaimed “conservative” (about as much as Michael Moore) Andrew Sullivan has picked up the theme and is moving it along. In fact, I find Sullivan’s descent into sleaze mongering caused by his Obama infatuation so disgusting, I will remove him from my blogroll. I simply cannot bear to read his hypocritical posing any more.

The abortion-worshipping left, including Sullivan, is scared of Palin and seems to think that if they can raise enough doubt, McCain will have to drop her or that the right will be so disgusted that Palin’s 16-year old daughter had a child that they will abandon her immediately. I will get to the elaboration and debunking of this smear presently. But let me play devil’s advocate and say, “Assume that the rumor is true. The daughter had a handicapped child, the condition of which was known part-way through the pregnancy. Won’t that destroy her credibility as a candidate who is a part of the ‘Straight Talk Express’?” Ahh, no. Likely, it will increase Palin’s credibility with the social values folks. The Downs Syndrome possibility was discovered during the pregnancy. Rather than go the “easy” route favored by liberals (I will be connecting to a post on that) and abort the baby, and to relieve their teen-aged daughter of the challenge of raising a developmentally-handicapped child (or the “punishment” of having a baby, as Obama put it in a speech), the Palins took him as their own. That is an almost saintly decision and would not cost them politically despite what would be the best efforts of the media.

Some of the lefties challenged Palin about why she would have tests done if she was going to keep the child anyway and claimed she was somehow hypocritical. When my wife was pregnant with our last child, she was over 35. It was highly recommended that such screening be done. We debated whether to go through with that, since we had decided that we wanted the child anyway. We eventually went ahead with the testing for a simple reason. If the child had Downs, we wanted to prepare ourselves for the challenges ahead of time rather than be surprised at birth. We would have had many questions that we would have wanted answered before the baby arrived. So, Palin’s decision to have the tests done make perfect sense to us, though probably not to the (likely childless) liberals accusing Palin. We are thankful that our little boy does not have those challenges, but we admire Palin and her family for her decision.

Here is a roundup of some of the crazy arguments (with links) from various lefties. [Caution: Some of the language in this post is a bit “forthright” in its criticism of the lefties.] If you go to the links, you’ll get some of the flavor of the hatred, paranoia, and conspiracy looniness of liberals. So much for the broad-minded tolerance on which liberals pride themselves, but which anyone who has to deal with them on a daily basis knows to be a delusion.

Nor is this limited to crazies such as the people from Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. Check out this collection from the Washington Post blog. Some of these posts refer to the news that Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/bristol_pal in_is_pregnant.html?hpid=topnews

“We should demand a paternity test. How much you want to bet Mr. Palin is the father?”

“If it’s true that Palin let her daughter be statutorily raped by a much older man, she should resign her nomination immediately.”

“Hmm… I’ve been saying that all along. Todd Pail is the father of Bristol’s retarded baby, Trig. Sex out of wedlock between father and daughter is a common practice here in Utah…I imagine in Alaska too. We need to investigate.”

“P.S. The younger daughter is hotter. Hopefully she will follow in big sis’ footsteps.”

“Bill that retarded new born is actually Willow’s baby.”

“With this news of Palin’s daughter having sex with all these men in Alaska we must ask ourselves before voting for McCain/Palin if we really need anymore postitutes in Washington.”

“Thanks GOP.. You now have put the poster family up for white trash in line for the presidency, whats your next move?”

“I think there is no doubt but that Bristol is Trig’s mom. I think that there are only two possibilities:

1. This is Bristol’s second baby. Mom and Dad agreed to bail her out for baby #1. But Bristol is gonna have to get married for baby #2.”

Such tender and restrained sentiments, right? Don’t link to the WaPo site for the rest of the comments. They portray liberal hate and intolerance in such stark fashion that it makes one’s blood boil if one is not used to it. Of course, facts such as this photo of a very pregnant Gov. Sarah Palin don’t slow down these conspiracy loons in the slightest. They claim it’s a costume such as the one used in an episode of Desperate Housewives! I kid you not. So, it’s obviously a conspiracy among Palin, her family, her doctors, and various hospitals. Even the daughter’s current pregnancy over which these tolerant libs are now waxing wroth does not stop them, as you can see from the above comments. I have read a number of left blog threads, and those comments are not unusual. Even Obama has finally weighed in to say that the family is off-limits, perhaps because he has lauded his mother’s sacrifice (somewhat undeservedly in view of the preeminent role of his grandparents) in raising him. His mother was under 18 and single when she got pregnant. Of course, sentiments such as Obama’s didn’t stop the Democrats from attacking the Bush girls and “outing” Cheney’s daughter in previous elections. But if the Republicans go after Michelle Obama when she goes on political screeching speaking tours to attack Americans and the United States, that is said to be awful.

If they aren’t questioning the baby’s maternity and paternity, the liberals denounce Palin for not staying home (remember these are the liberal feminists speaking), for flying when she was pregnant (here is Alan Colmes, the dumber half of Hannity & Colmes) and not having the baby in a strange state far from her family, or for having the baby at all. The last line is also a liberal line of attack on the daughter’s current pregnancy. After all, Obama presumably would opt for the metal rod and suction machine to avoid “punishing his daughter with a baby.” Here is the inestimable Scrappleface with the Obama reaction.

The good side of this is that the more this gets out, the more I suspect this will bite the Democrats in their behinds. And, the Republicans will rally. This will not hurt Palin with conservatives. See also my man Fred Thompson’s take on Palin in general and this matter in particular. McCain raised $10 million over the weekend, a record amount for him, and the party activists are on board. I know that I have gone from someone on the fence for whom even Ann Coulter’s “get drunk and vote for McCain” was not a palatable alternative to someone who would vote for PALIN-McCain to someone who is ready to put up a campaign sign and give money to the campaign (well, maybe not until the kids are out of college) because of these attacks. Here is James Dobson’s reaction, which is par for the course as far as explaining the Christian position on these things, a position that the left intentionally or ignorantly just does not comprehend.

So, as these things go, the more left smear attacks there are, the more this will energize the McCain campaign. Some of the Democrats are starting to realize that. I have read some lefties now saying that the whole controversy was orchestrated by Karl Rove to help McCain. Yes, Rove and McCain are such close allies. Others claim that McCain showed a lack of judgment by picking Palin because he did not know about this. The McCain campaign says that they did. If you look at the family picture at the Dayton announcement, the daughter is clearly wearing an engagement ring or similar band on her ring finger, so this was not being kept a secret. Also, various news reporters have gone to the Palins’ home town and talked to the “natives.” Apparently the daughter’s pregnancy was an open secret.

I think that this story is not likely to have a negative effect, as people identify with the Palins’ family problems that many others also have faced. On the other hand, not everyone can identify with the “problem” of getting a convicted felon to get them a favorable deal on a $1.6 million mansion in exchange for sweetheart earmarks. Instead, at worst this will have no impact and it may well benefit the ticket despite calls by CNN and others of the media wing of the Democrat Party for McCain to dump Palin. That would destroy McCain’s chances, but we all know that the media are very sympathetically concerned about McCain’s good fortune in this election, don’t we?