Clinton v Palin in 2012?

The Lifetime Channel couldn’t script this. Just as we started to get used to the idea of a vice-president with a 4-month-old baby, now it turns out Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. The McCain campaign claims it knew this before picking her. I guess they figured hurricane day was a good time to drop the news — or they felt the need to confront those rumours that Palin’s baby was really her daughter’s.

I’ve spoken with a few delegates here about Sarah Palin and they are very enthusiastic. One woman from New Orleans told me she was behind McCain for “national security reasons” but the addition of Palin, a hard-line pro-lifer, really enhanced the ticket for her. And as a mother of a large family, she said, she is rooting for her. The fact that her 17-year-old daughter did not practice celibacy before marriage: not a big deal, she said. What’s important is that she’s keeping the baby, she said.

Here were some of my first thoughts on Palin on Friday, in no particular order:

1) Can’t wait to hear what Hillary Clinton has to say about Palin. Can’t wait to hear what Palin has to say about Clinton.

2) Clinton v. Palin in 2012?!

3) Her social conservatism is a much bigger deal than her gender given McCain’s problem’s with the party base.

4) What a leap of faith in someone he hardly knows.

5) What will the-media-is-misogynist Geraldine Ferraro say?

6) Will the Clinton- voters embrace this choice  because of her gender, or see it as mere tokenism and pandering?

7) He could not have reached further outside the Beltway. The prospect of a McCain presidency just got a whole lot more interesting.

8) Regardless of who wins, the vice-president could in theory have a son serving in Iraq.

9) Wow! When my kid was only a few months old was when I came to understand why forced sleep deprivation is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Maybe you just get much, much better at it by #5?