Kleinheider writes what I've been thinking

- and better than I would've articulated it, at the Nashville Post Politics blog. I've excerpted, yet I recommend you read it all, and enjoy:

Sarah Palin lived by a code and tried to have her kids live by it as well. Did she fail?
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The Left simply misunderstands the Cultural War because they believe that social and religious conservatives think they are perfect people. Rural, working class people know exactly who they are. The Left seems to think that they are somehow breaking the news to social conservatives that sometimes, even often, kids will have sex and get pregnant.
[...]
conservatives have code by which they live that accounts for it all. Whether they are “right” or “wrong” is immaterial. It is the Left’s misunderstanding which is important here.
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For what the Left sees as hypocrisy, most folks who are not Obama voters just see as falling short. As, of course, we, as humans, all do.

Bristol Palin’s journey is a human story. She tried to be good. She fell short. Instead of aborting the baby she will carry it to term and marry the father. To socially conservative America, there is nothing tragic about this.

You see, to many of the voters Barack Obama has not yet seemed to reach and who have thus far been ambivalent about McCain, this is exactly how these things are supposed to go. Their reality has not been shaken, the scales have not fallen from their eyes.

Sarah Palin did nothing “wrong.” And Bristol Palin did nothing other than sin, which we all do. She is now managing her sin as proscribed by tradition. To the traditionalist the situation is not ideal, no, but it is not a disaster.

This is a human story. The more the left attacks, attempts to expose “hypocrisy”, the more the personal will very much become the political. Unfortunately it will become political in a way that leads all those hard working Bubbas, all those church-going single mommas, right out to the polls to vote for that war hero and and those women they now identify with, Sarah and Bristol Palin.

To the Left, this situation looks like that big fat change-up they have been waiting for coming right across the plate. Let me assure you, friends, what is coming at you is a knuckleball, a greased pig with wings.

You are gonna want to take this pitch. You may win the “argument”, but you will lose the election.