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September 2, 2008 - 5:39am.
As a downsized convention got underway, Republican delegates, who generally are more conservative than their standard bearer John McCain, continued to applaud his choice of the quirky Alaskan governor and mother of five to run with him, despite her lack of national security credentials. They filled McCain's coffers with nearly $8 million in the first two days after his announcement. And GOP delegates are standing by her in the wake of the news that her daughter Bristol is five-months pregnant, expressing sympathy for the family. While the topic was equally as discussed as Hurricane Gustav while delegates milled around, evangelicals were avid in their appreciation that the Palin daughter is not going to have an abortion. They invariably noted that the governor herself refused to consider an abortion when she found out that her infant son, Trig, would be born with Down Syndrome. Several delegates speculated that many mothers from both parties who have found themselves confronted with a pregnant, unwed daughter would identify with her. But the family's personal dilemma, which is not likely to be mentioned by either Barack Obama or Joe Biden, has taken away the GOP's long insistence that it owns family values. It has also pushed economic issues such as teenage pregnancy, sex education, the cost of day care for working women, health insurance and equal pay, as well as abortion, more fully into the debate. Teen pregnancy in the United States has begun to increase after declining in the 1990s. The Guttmacher Institute says that nearly half of all 15- to 19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once. There is no research yet on exactly why the teenage pregnancy rate has started upward again. According to the National Child Care Information Center, the cost of day care in the United States is rising steadily every year and now ranges between $4,000 for a child younger than one to $16,000. For a child over one the cost is only about $1,000 less on average across the United States. Democrats now will make frequent reference to McCain's refusal to vote for the so-called Lilly Ledbetter bill that would have given women the opportunity to sue employers for race or gender pay discrimination even if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days or more in the past. There also is little doubt that Hillary Rodham Clinton, who received 18 million votes in her showdown primaries with Obama will campaign more vigorously for the Democrats than she might have after losing out to Biden to be on the ticket. Friends said she does not want to see Palin usurp her hard-fought effort to break the glass ceiling and will try to keep working women in particular from voting for McCain just because he has a woman on the ticket. She again will ask women, Did you vote just for me? Or for Democratic issues she believes are more favorable to women than the ones the GOP platform favors. Obama, Biden and Clinton oppose Palin on every major social issue. She is against abortion for rape and incest, for the death penalty, against same-sex marriage, for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, against gun control, and she famously sued the federal government to delist polar bears as an endangered species. But as an avid outdoorswoman, a self-proclaimed hockey mom, and a reformer who openly criticized the notoriously corrupt politics of Alaska, she will be hard to patronize when Biden debates her on Oct. 2, an event that now may draw more viewers than the two debates between McCain and Obama and which will be moderated by a woman, Gwen Ifill of PBS, who will have to decide whether or not to ask about her daughter.
(Scripps Howard columnist Ann McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986. E-mail amcfeatters(at)nationalpress.com.)
Capitol Hill Blue's columnists, blogs and reader comments Capitol Hill Blue is an independent, non-partisan news site that belongs to no political party and subscribes to no political or philosophical point-of-view. Our columnists are welcome to their opinions but readers should understand that their views do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of this web site. We also welcome comments to selected opinion columns and in our popular ReaderRant discussion forum. Please remember, however, that we believe in civility on this web site and comments may be reviewed, moderated or removed if we feel they contain obscenities, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitic remarks or attack other posters. Our goal is reasoned discussion on issues facing this nation and we do not feel that goal is served by personal attacks and by seeing how many cute adjectives you can attach to an elected official or politician's name. Copyright © 2008 Capitol Hill Blue
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The confirmation that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old unwed daughter is pregnant has turned the campaign strategies of both Republican and Democratic parties askew. Women's issues will be more front and center. But both parties will be far more careful in how they attack the other.
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...evangelicals were avid
Submitted by keith on September 2, 2008 - 6:01am.What a bunch of "holier-than-thou" hypocrites!
Every single so called "fundamentalist" Christian I have ever known and who claims that the Bible is literal truth is also hypocritically selective about which Bible passages are literal and which are not.
A rule of thumb seems to be that if the Bible quote condemns someone else's sins, then it’s a literal rule.
However, if it condemns something they, themselves are doing (or it furthers their "holy" cause) then there’s always some wiggle room.
HELLO! That's exactly what
Submitted by CheckerboardStr... on September 2, 2008 - 11:40am.HELLO!
That's exactly what we're witnessing right now!
Bible Beaters don't claim to be perfect. They just expect YOU to be!
That's very hypocritical of
Submitted by Flapsaddle on September 2, 2008 - 11:57am.That's very hypocritical of them. After all, Jesus taught that it was advisable to remove the beam from your own eye before criticizing the mote in your neighbor's eye.
Most sincerely,
T. J. Flapsaddle
On the street behind my
Submitted by gazelle1929 on September 2, 2008 - 8:59am.On the street behind my house there is one of those very conservative, evangelical, vote-Republican-or-go-to-hell churches. A couple of years ago their lay youth minister, a guy of about 25, took the first two words of his title as an order, and was caught swiving a 15-year-old girl in the back of a church van.
After the trial and the sentencing of the guy to 18 months in jail, the church announced that they would welcome him back with open arms, as they had forgiven his sins.
And how did they treat the 15-year-old girl? Why, the preacher called her a harlot and a Jezebel in front of the congregation and kicked her and her parents out of the church.
My nearly five years living
Submitted by keith on September 2, 2008 - 9:50am.My nearly five years living in Wichita Falls, Texas and some 15 years in the "Bible belt" of Ohio taught me two things:
One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in Hell.
The other is that sex is the most awful, dirty thing on the face of the earth and you should save it for someone you love.
Unfortunately, whether inside our outside of wedlock, the evangelicals now seem hell-bent on reproducing themselves like rabbits. Their self-stated goal is to eventually repopulate the planet with sympathetic others who share the same far-right, fundamentalist ideas on religion as they do.
In that sense, the late Carl Sagan got it absolutely correct when he said that: "...a celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."
Jesus spoke of such
Submitted by Flapsaddle on September 2, 2008 - 12:02pm.Jesus spoke of such legalists as being 'hypocrites...like whited tombs...shining on the outside but filled with corruption.'
Most sincerely,
T. J. Flapsaddle
Sagan really said that?
Submitted by bryan mcclellan on September 2, 2008 - 11:52am.Sagan really said that? Hallelujah Halleys Comet Billllllllllions of times!
It is regrettable the same
Submitted by sherry on September 2, 2008 - 1:07pm.It is regrettable the same people who plea for tolerance are the same people who believe it is just fine to paint all evangelicals as a bunch of wackos.
This is the same group who would be so greatly offended if I made such generalities regarding a race or homosexuals, one could only imagine the screaming.
You should be ashamed.
Sherry, I'm going to share a
Submitted by CheckerboardStr... on September 2, 2008 - 5:55pm.Sherry, I'm going to share a story I thought I'd take to my coffin, and I hope my lovely wife never finds out...
When we first got together we were both finalizing one divorce each. We didn't cheat on our spouses; we found each other again AFTER our first marriages had fallen apart.
Anyway, the wife was as poor as could be and barely able to feed the kids and keep a roof over her head.
I wasn't rich but it helped that I was bringing in some dough because she was being ravaged by M.S. and the VA had yet to make a determination or a final diagnosis, so she was on her own and not even able to afford a decent wheelchair.
Her church, an evangelical Nazarene congregation, helped her out a little here and there, and if it hadn't been for that my wife would have probably wound up living in her car, unable to walk and with two kids in the middle of Northeast Arkansas, one of whom was born with five major heart defects.
But we had to go at it commonlaw, because for us to get married would have made us both into bigamists.
When word got to the pastor, we were subjected to a barrage of weekly sermons that centered on "adultery, fornication and wickedness" and the pastor made it very clear in both words, gestures and his laser like gaze fixed upon us with his righteous finger pointed directly at my wife, who the couple in question was.
We were shunned by the congregation, and when it came time that we were fed up we were basically told "good riddance".
I saw very little forgiveness and humility.
The pastor screamed at my wife in his office, asking her if she knew what kind of position SHE was putting HIM in.
Walk a mile, Sherry...walk a mile in my shoes.
It's the words and deeds of these congregations that
paint them, not prejudice.
The thing that has me
Submitted by jwritesel on September 2, 2008 - 7:36pm.The thing that has me wondering is that here we have a 17 year old young person who has barely been out of Alaska and is now saddled with a baby. I was thinking about what she could have been and the things she could have experienced had she not been tied down to caring for her infant. I read her boyfriend was spouting off about being a red neck and not wanting anything to do with raising the child. Good luck is all I can say. I think it will take nothing short of a shotgun to get him to wedding ceremony and I be willing to believe support will be hard to come by as well. It is too bad her parents and his for that matter as well did not take the time to talk to them about planned parenthood and contraception. I know a lot of people will say she can still do a lot but having raised 2 of my own I found it to be a full time job leaving almost no time for much else.