VP candidate Palin unveiled

Two weeks ago, John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his Republican Presidential running mate. Since that time, I think Americans have learned more about her and her family than we know about the families of our good friends.

The simple fact is, Sarah Palin is such a big news story I can’t simply write just one article about her. With all of the “scandals” and criticisms coming out in the news, I feel as if I need to spend some time dispelling these denigrating rumors.

Sarah Palin was on the cover of US Weekly this past week. The title, in very large print, is “Babies, Lies and Scandal.” Surrounding this title are the phrases, “Under Attack, Admits Daughter, 17, is pregnant.” “Investigated for firing of Sister’s ex-husband.” and “Mom of Five: New embarrassing surprises.” I get the feeling that US Weekly will not be campaigning for McCain and Palin this fall.

Let’s start from the top. Very soon after John McCain selected Palin as his running mate, liberals and bloggers all over the country created a scandal regarding Palin’s four-month-old son, Trig. They claimed Bristol, Palin’s daughter, was Trig’s biological mother. Once these rumors were picked up by the national media, the Palin campaign decided they had to dispel these rumors with the truth. At this point, the campaign disclosed that Bristol couldn’t be Trig’s mother, as she is five months pregnant with her boyfriend’s child. In a statement released by Palin and her husband Todd, they said that they loved their daughter very much, were proud of her and her decisions to have the baby and marry her boyfriend.

While many consider this loving and compassionate, it set off a national firestorm as Palin’s detractors started asking what kind of mother would let her 17-year-old daughter get pregnant? This is a stupid question. Anyone who has attended an American high school or college knows that the percentage of young adults participating in premarital sex is extremely high. Very simply, parents can’t control their children every second of every day, and even the best of children fall far short of perfection. Sarah Palin should be praised for her love and commitment to her family as they go through and deal with issues that are common in the modern American family.

The biggest “scandal” facing Palin is an ethics investigation in Alaska regarding the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. It is believed that he was fired for refusing to fire the ex-husband of Palin’s sister, a police officer named Michael Wooten. However, according to CBS News, Monegan stated that no one ever asked him to fire Wooten. Recognizing the ethical issues that Monegan’s firing brings up, Palin called for an investigation into this by Alaska’s Personnel Board to clear her name. Typically, when people ask the government to investigate themselves they don’t have anything to hide.

For now, liberals will run with this so called “scandal”, but I suspect in the future her name will be completely cleared. Democrats most popular criticism of Sarah Palin is that she lacks experience. The truth is that Palin actually has more executive experience than John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined. While her executive experience is short, she’s the only person on either ticket that has ever worked in an executive capacity.

Shortly after Palin was chosen as McCain’s running mate, Obama tried to showcase that he has more executive experience than Palin.

“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wasilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month,” Obama said.

Libertarian radio talk show host Neal Boortz looked into the matter and found that while Palin was governor of Alaska she managed a $9 billion budget with $13 billion in revenue, and 25,000 employees. If Palin’s executive experience is weak, then Barack Obama’s must be nonexistent.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 51 percent of Americans believe the media is trying to hurt Palin, while only 5 percent believe the media is trying to help her. There are many other unfair attacks that I’ve heard in the blogosphere and on liberal sites like Daily Kos. For instance, some say Palin shouldn’t be running for Vice-President because she should be at home raising her children. This is a ridiculous argument that moves the women’s rights movement back about 40 years.

Unfortunately, these attacks by leftists aimed at helping the Obama campaign are unfairly disparaging a woman and her family who have done nothing to deserve it.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 12 2008. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry