McCain is feeding Bristol Palin to the bears

My favorite political websites are talking about nothing but Sarah Palin. Josh Marshall at TPM:

Since there is widespread agreement that the children of candidates should not become topics of campaign debate, it behooves us to note that the McCain campaign has almost singlehandedly made Sarah Palin's daughter a central figure in the Republican convention.

It was the McCain campaign that announced Palin's daughter's pregnancy. That alone might be understandable since it appears a supermarket tabloid was about to print the story. But it was the McCain campaign, entirely on its own, that dished up unsubstantiated claims about maternity tests and all sorts of other lurid nonsense that had never been seen in print anywhere.

Now, McCain has staged a photo op of him greeting Bristol and her boyfriend at the airport in St. Paul. Wonder whose idea it was for the hockey hunk to come to the convention?

Marshall says:

Let's be clear about what's happening here. Overwhelmingly, reporters are pressing eminently reasonable questions -- her role in troopergate, her lack of experience, her connections to the AIP, her history of earmarking and lobbyists, etc. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is going absolutely non-stop about Palin's daughter. It is unmistakable.

Not only are they distracting people from the real issues, they're playing to their base by complaining about the "liberal" media. And turning Sarah Palin into a martyr.