Re: Obama's smear machine too stupid to get out of it's own way
by
Beathan
09/01/2008, 9:16 PM #
1. This is very, very doubtful. It is far more likely that
the Palins did not tell McCain that Bristol is pregnant. Lord knows,
the McCain campaign did not ask. If this had been an prepared issue,
even a private one, the roll out would have been very different.
Verdict -- Palin has already betrayed McCain's trust -- four days into
their relationship.
2. The evidence of Trig's parenthood
is still confusing -- as is the hamhanded coverup by Palin (removing
the photos from the governor site, etc.). I am inclined to think that
Palin was trying to keep her daughter's current pregnancy secret -- but
her attempt to do so was so inept that it lead to rumors even more
damaging than the truth, forcing the truth to be revealed in a clumsy
way.
3. The Obama camp did not break the story of
Bristol's pregnancy. The McCain camp broke it to refute the story that
Trig is Bristol's son. They say -- how can Bristol have a four month
old child if she is five months pregnant? Well -- the math works -- but
the story is still, well, National Enquirer meets Lifetime. It is not
where the McCain campaign wants to be.
4. So -- Obama is
better than Rove, and better than his own supporters (myself included)
-- and somehow this hurts him? I don't get it. By that standard -- a
vote for McCain would be a vote for Guggah. I mean -- do you really
want to go there?
5. Let's see -- McCain calls Chelsea
ugly. (He did not say the attacks on her were ugly -- that would be OK;
he said SHE is ugly.) SO -- McCain calls Chelsea ugly, and that somehow
is supposed to appeal to Clinton voters? Breathe, man, you are
suffering from severe oxygen deprivation or something.
6.
Obama's mother was not a national leader of the abstinence movement.
Obama's mother was a free spirit -- a woman of her times. In other
words, anyone who knew Ann Soetoro can say "I knew Ann Soetoro; Ann
Soetoro was a friend of mine; and Sarah Palin is no Ann Soetoro." The
hypocrisy is not in getting pregnant as a teenager -- the hypocrisy is
in supporting abstinence only policies even though they don't work and
even though they result in girls, like Bristol Palin, getting payment.
As Obama said, we might not all agree on abortion -- but we can all
agree on preventing teen pregnancy (or, at least, that should be a
point on which we all agree ... perhaps McCain, in a misguided attempt
to distance himself from Obama, was trying for the pro-teen-pregnancy
vote).
So
-- most of the claims regarding Sarah Palin being a bad mother have not
come from men -- they have come from mothers. Men, at the moment, tend
to like Sarah Palin. She is a beauty -- and men, at least initially,
are inclined to give beauties the benefit of the doubt. Women are less
inclined to do so -- judging other women on their actions -- and most
of these women have not been impressed by Sarah Palin's reckless travel
while in labor and neglect of her special needs child, foisting the
child off on a teenage daughter, afterwards.
So, McCain, true to his rash inclination to fly by
the seat of his pants, chose a veep without vetting her. All hell
breaks loose when she proves to have more problems than any of the
celebrities in the "Biggest Celebrity in the World" ad. She has been on
the national stage for four days (four days!) -- and already she has
turned McCain into an old goat and his campaign into a joke.
Beathan
