Wednesday, September 03, 2008

What Did They Expcet?

One of the things that is so strange to me about the Sarah Palin coverage is the idea that social conservatives would be upset about her teenage daughter's pregnancy. It is rather depressing that there is such a gulf of feeling and sentiment that one side can so mistake the reactions of the other to an issue. Did people actually believe that conservatives would be demanding she be removed from the ticket or something? And what did they expect the McCain team to do, put out a press release about the woman's daughter? How weird would that have been?

One thing is rather self-serving about the surprise the MSM is expressing about the conservative lack of reaction--it feeds into their meme about the improper vetting of Palin by the McCain team. They can't just take the natural and obvious explanation that McCain didn't care (and what a monster he would have been portrayed as if it had gotten out that he was upset about it or even nixed her candidacy over it) but instead has to be evidence of his failure to do due diligence. What was he supposed to have done or said about it? Was he supposed to have announced the kid's problems? Denounced them? Is it fair or even reasonable to call his indifference to the situation a mistake if his having done anything else would have been denounced as an even worse failing? Either way the MSM are going to find a fault with the conservative. And imagine if this had been a liberal's daughter in this situation. When liberal John Edwards has a child out of wedlock and is caught meeting the mother in a motel room forcing him to hide in a bathroom it is a non-story but when the opportunity to smear a conservative comes up the creeps have a field day. It is just creepy.

Another interesting point that Cook brings out is that reporters are treating her as an unworthy choice in part because they had been treating her as an unworthy choice. This would not have happened with Pawlenty even though objectively he is about the same on experience and Palin simply because they had been talking about him as a contender.

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