Disgusting
Andrew Sullivan has been in 110%, foaming-at-the-mouth attack-dog mode against Sarah Palin all week. He’s so far off the deep end about the VP candidate that he’s giving serious consideration to the crackpot conspiracy theory that Palin’s infant child is actually her grandchild, and suggesting that Palin should release her medical records to prove that the baby is hers, and not her daughter’s.
Now he now has turned his Palin-bashing into a plug for his 2006 book The Conservative Soul. Sullivan says you have to read his book “If you want to know why a once decent, honorable, if erratic figure like John McCain came to pick a total unknown with a Down Syndrome baby as his replacement as war-president…” (emphasis is mine)
What exactly does having a child with Down’s Syndrome have to do with…anything? There was a time when I respected Andrew Sullivan, but it seems so very distant now.
7 Responses to “Disgusting”
Perhaps the suggestion is that raising an infant, let alone an infant with Down’s Syndrome, is a time-consuming and difficult task and is not best suited for someone who will also be leading (or at least preparing to lead) a nation at war.
Furthermore, the right is using her new baby to tout her conservative credintials. Perhaps you should direct your question: “What exactly does having a child with Down’s Syndrome have to do with…anything” there.
I think the reason he brought this up is because so many people have mentioned the baby as a point in her favor. If you’re pro-life, it certainly is. But it’s not much qualification to run a war.
Sometimes I think Sullivan just has issues with powerful women politicians in general. His attacks against Hillary Clinton (”Nixon in a pantssuit”) were always pretty nasty. He’s been nearly unreadable this week.
Andrew Sullivan was probably the biggest fan Margaret Thatcher ever had. Of course, the difference between Thatcher and Clinton seems pretty striking to me.
It’s true some folks have pointed to Palin’s baby as adding to her pro-life cred, but I haven’t seen anyone making a huge deal out of it. On the other hand, mentioning it in the dismissive way Sullivan did is really out of bounds.
I do think that Sullivan’s weird obsession about whether the baby was hers or her daughters was, well, weird. But I’m pretty sure that Jason is right about the phrase that Eric bolded in the main post — Sullivan is not attacking her having had this baby (I really can’t imagine him doing so), but rather the way that the baby was & is a significant part of the McCain campaign’s marketing strategy with her. They can’t tout anything substantive, so, it’s her “great pro-life hockey mom” status that they are betting the farm on.
How stupid do the candidates and media commentators think we are?