Palin daughter's pregnancy stirs strong emotions from iReporters

(CNN) -- When Sen. John McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, announced that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant, the news prompted a big response from the iReport.com community.

Palin revealed Monday that her daughter Bristol is pregnant and plans to marry the father. The announcement followed Internet rumors that Sarah Palin's 4-month-old baby was actually Bristol's.

iReport.com users posted dozens of stories and hundreds of comments in response to the news. Many iReporters said that the issue is a personal matter, while others believed that the pregnancy deserves public attention.

Republican presidential candidate McCain was aware of Bristol's pregnancy before he chose Palin as his running mate, a top adviser to the Arizona senator said.

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama said that families should be off-limits in presidential campaigns after learning of the news. "Let me be as clear as possible," Obama said. "I think people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits."

iReporter Darla Jones of Roseburg, Oregon, who supports McCain, agrees that the media and public should leave Bristol and the Palin family alone.

"I had a daughter very young," Jones wrote on iReport.com, explaining that being a young mother made it difficult to get jobs and complete her education. "This should not affect the presidency in any way."

Sabrina Lee also had a child at a young age, but believes that the news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy merits attention. "Personally, I have a right to know anything and everything about the next president and vice president," she wrote on iReport.com.

"I want to know the truth," Lee said. "I feel as a voter I have the right to know everything about each nominee. This is just my opinion, but it's also my vote and it's precious."

The Laveen, Arizona, resident said that she plans to vote for Obama. Although Lee said she was previously undecided, she decided to vote for Obama after McCain announced his running mate.

"Family values are a Republican platform," she said, describing the news of Bristol's pregnancy as "a travesty."

Alicia Summers of El Mirage, Arizona, agrees that the vice presidential candidate and her family deserve scrutiny. "Did Palin really think she could come into a race at the 23rd hour and not be subjected to questions?" she asked.

Summers, an Obama supporter, noted, "the press only has two months to find out info about you that they took years to get on everyone else."
She suggested that Palin drop out of the race out of respect for the privacy of her family.

Graduate student Kristine Phillips also believes that Palin should withdraw. "An unmarried 17-year-old pregnant daughter is not consistent with conservative principles," she wrote on iReport.com.

Phillips, who describes herself as politically moderate, said conservatives' support of Palin is "absolutely hypocritical."

"While I understand that Palin's role as a mother may or may not be debated here for the political sphere, this situation does call into question some of her policies during her role as governor and her character as a person," Phillips said.

Mark Swiger of Jonesboro, Georgia, urged iReporters to "be professional and ethical by not bringing Sarah Palin's teenage daughter into politics."
Swiger cited Obama and senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, who both asked the media and public to leave politicians' children out of the spotlight.

Swiger, who is leaning toward McCain, said he usually votes based on moral issues. He believes that Bristol's pregnancy should have no bearing on her mother's political career.

"This is a moral line of decency that must not be crossed by Democrats, Republicans or human beings," he said.

Stephanopoulos: Three Questions Republicans Are Asking Themselves About Palin
September 02, 2008 9:24 AM

Republicans were rocked yesterday by new revelations about Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, and are increasingly worried about what else they may not know about John McCain's running mate.

Republican sources say three questions are being asked by delegates at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and by party operatives around the country:

1) What else is out there about Palin? Monday brought the announcement that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant; news that Palin was once a member of the fringe Alaska independence party; and the revelation that Palin's husband was arrested for a DUI in the 1980s. The news about Palin has continued to come this morning, with the Washington Post reporting that Palin hired a lobbying firm during her time as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, to lobby for millions in earmarks for the small town.

2) Was the vetting process complete and professional? Reports in Tuesday's New York Times and Alaska Daily News both suggest the McCain campaign's vetting of Palin was swift and superficial, although the McCain campaign continues to insist that Palin was thoroughly and professionally vetted.

3) And most significantly, what message will voters hear about McCain's judgment that he chose someone to be his running mate who has almost no national security experience and who is so much of an unknown quantity?

McCain defends Palin selection process
Tue Sep 2, 2008 9:52pm EDT
By Steve Holland


ST. PAUL, Minnesota (Reuters) - Republican John McCain rallied behind his vice presidential pick Sarah Palin on Tuesday and his campaign accused Democrat Barack Obama of sexism for questioning her level of experience.

His comments came as the Republican convention to nominate McCain and Palin as their party's candidates was to finally get started, after a delay due to Hurricane Gustav, with President George W. Bush to speak via satellite hookup.

McCain, in Cleveland, said he was excited about Alaska Gov. Palin and predicted a warm welcome for her from Republican delegates when she addressed the convention on Wednesday.

"America's excited and they're going to be even more excited once they see her tomorrow night," he told reporters. "I'm very, very proud of the impression that she's made on all of America and I'm looking forward to serving with her."

Palin's disclosure that her 17-year-old, unmarried daughter is pregnant, in addition to the news that she had hired a private lawyer in an ethics probe in Alaska, led some to raise questions about McCain's judgment and how thoroughly her background was examined in selecting the relatively unknown governor last week as his No. 2.

"My vetting process was completely thorough and I'm grateful for the results," McCain told reporters in Philadelphia after a visit with firefighters.

McCain's campaign fought back hard after Obama told CNN on Monday that Palin's level of experience as a former mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, did not match his own, citing the size of his campaign.

"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 dollars a year -- we have a budget of about three times that just for the month," Obama had said.

SEXISM?
McCain adviser Carly Fiorina said she was appalled and accused him of sexism, a charge the Obama camp had faced during Democrat Hillary Clinton's primary battle against him.

"The facts are that Sarah Palin has made more executive decisions as a mayor and governor than Barack Obama has made in his life," Fiorina said.

"Because of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Gov. Palin," Fiorina said.

The McCain campaign released a copy of Palin's Republican voter registration card to rebut a report in The New York Times that Palin had been a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which wants the state to vote on seceding from the United States, for two years in the 1990s.

"The allegations that Gov. Palin was a member of (the) Alaska Independence Party are false. She's never been a member of the Alaska Independence Party," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

When Palin was announced Friday, Republicans welcomed her entry into the presidential race against Obama and Joe Biden in the November 4 election as bringing a burst of energy to the McCain campaign.

They like her anti-abortion, pro-guns stances and her history of government reform in Alaska in her two years as the state's governor.

There was every indication that McCain and other Republicans were standing by their woman despite the hubbub.

"He absolutely keeps her," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "If he drops her, the election is over. There's zero chance that he'll drop her."

Bush was the headliner among Tuesday's speakers, a group that also included former Sen. Fred Thompson, who lost to McCain in the Republican primaries, and close McCain ally Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said the timing of Palin's speech was not yet set. He would not comment on whether she would use that speech to address any of the controversies surrounding her.

But her remarks will be "the most important speech the nominee will give in the course of the election" because of the large television audience, he said.