The Republicans' party crashed by 'details' on Palin

ST. PAUL — Going into the political convention season, a woman was expected to stir things up.

But her name was supposed to be Hillary, not Sarah.

Less than a week since being named as John McCain's choice for vice president on the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin's name is on the tip of all the blogs, not to mention the front page of the New York Times and every other media outlet in the country.

It's all the Republicans hoped for — a country abuzz about McCain's unorthodox choice for v.p. — but not for the hoped-for-reasons.

Following the party-approved portrait of Palin as a corruption-fighting, family values-harboring hockey mom with five children, including a baby born — and pointedly not aborted — with Down syndrome, comes a non-photo-shopped version that brings less flattering details into focus. Such details include the fact that the Palins' unmarried 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant and that Palin was back at work as governor of Alaska just three days after little Trig, the Down syndrome child, was born this past April.

Giving rise to questions about the thoroughness of McCain's vetting process; about McCain's judgment in choosing such a controversial vice president if he knew all the details; about Palin's character; about mothers in the workplace; about a public figure's right to privacy; about an out-of-control, invasive media, Sarah Palin has overnight become a one-woman 24-7 talk show topic.

Here at the scene of the Republican National Convention, the eye of the storm as it were, attention has quickly shifted from Hurricane Gustav to Hurricane Sarah.

On the record, most politicians are echoing Utah senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both of whom voiced enthusiastic support for Palin as both a vice presidential nominee and a responsible parent.

"She's strong, capable and smart," said Hatch, who added, "and a real human being. John McCain made an excellent choice."

"Her private life should be off-limits," said Bennett, who praised Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's statement reflecting the same sentiment.

None of Utah's Republican Party state delegates here have expressed anything but support for Palin's nomination and sympathy for the public invasions into her family's privacy.

That's what they have to say, of course, and no doubt it is what Palin will say herself when she addresses the RNC tonight on an evening when she is to be officially nominated as vice president.