New School Politics

Campaign ‘08: Knocked Up

Ryan | 1 09 2008

Breaking shortly ago, Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol Palin, is known to be five months pregnant. She intends to keep the baby and also marry the father (whose identity is not currently known).

The McCain campaign has noted that the Senator knew of this before he made his selection which confirms theories that in addition to lobbying for the women’s vote, the GOP is now aggressively pursuing the teenage-mom vote which experts believe could be an election-changing demographic in ‘08.

There is still no evidence that Trig Palin, Sarah Palin’s fifth child who was born with down syndrome just months ago is actually the daughter of Bristol Palin as some liberal blogs have alleged (although the Daily Kos gives a pretty good hack at it). This makes sense when you consider that for teenage mothers the chance of giving birth to a child with DS is about 0.1%, while that of a 45-year-old mother is 3.6%

Regardless, since the news inconveniently and coincidentally (hmm…) broke the same morning as the landfall of Hurricane Gustav near New Orleans, it appears that this juicy story may be drowned out by the news surge south.

Oh Gustav, why must you wreak so much havoc?!

UPDATE: As if this wasn’t enough for one day, the McCain campaign also announced that presumptive GOP nominee for “First Dude,” Todd “The Todd” Palin, was arrested on a DUI charge 21 years ago at the age of 22.