Just wanted to make a short observation or two about the situation around Bristol Palin, the pregnant daughter of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

The first is simply that I am wondering why it should make any difference at all to me as to whether Governor Palin’s family contains a pregnant daughter or any other family members of any particular persuasion.  Should it matter to me that her husband has extremist political views?  No.  That’s her husband.  Should it matter to me that her daughter is pregnant?  No, why should it?

Unfortunately, it only matters because the Republicans run for office on a platform of catering only to “traditional” families.  That is, only families whose makeup is similat to that in television sitcoms of the 1950′s.  Since this represents a minority of the US population of families, this makes the Republican Party the minority from the get go.  Of course, this is also the party that sought to impeach a Democratic president essentially for having consensual sex with someone who was not their spouse.  So she does have an artificial standard to uphold.

More important was the initial reaction to the media’s disclosure that Bristol Palin was pregnant.  First, this disclosure was made in a response to a rumor that Sarah Palin’s 5-month-old child was her daughter’s child.  Is governor Palin already susceptible to possible blackmail?

No, the initial response was to say that her family’s business was a personal thing.  I agree, we really should not have heard a lot about Palin’s daughter in the first place.  Initial reports did not identify the father of the child beyond the fact that his name was Levi.

Two days later, we were graced with the information that Levi was actually the fiancee of Bristol Palin.  It just seems that if this were really the case two days ago, that it would have been a simple matter to announce up front that she was pregnant with the child of herself and her fiancee.  However, the evidence would show that Governor Palin had not really thought to mention that the two children were getting married until, well, the next day when Levi was informed that he was getting married to Bristol or else.

I agree with Barak Obama when he said, “I think people’s families are off limits and people’s children are especially off limits.”  We should really have never heard about this issue at this point in time, and then, perhaps later, but only as a curiosity.

I think we are finding that the party that claims to have only people with impossibly high values will need to change if they truly want to become a party that connects with the rest of us.

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