Bristol Palin's pregnancy: Here we go again.

It's not often I quote Focus on the Family here at Dreams Into Lightning, but this statement from James Dobson (via LGF) easily makes the cut:

"In the 32-year history of Focus on the Family, we have offered prayer, counseling and resource assistance to tens of thousands of parents and children in the same situation the Palins are now facing. We have always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though there will of course be challenges along the way. That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.

"Being a Christian does not mean you're perfect. Nor does it mean your children are perfect. But it does mean there is forgiveness and restoration when we confess our imperfections to the Lord. I've been the beneficiary of that forgiveness and restoration in my own life countless times, as I'm sure the Palins have.

"The media are already trying to spin this as evidence Gov. Palin is a 'hypocrite,' but all it really means is that she and her family are human. They are in my prayers and those of millions of Americans."

I don't always see eye-to-eye with Dr. Dobson but he's got it just right. Here's Charlotte Hays at The Corner:

The Washington Post’s delicate sensibilities are such that it had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the story of (an adult) Democratic politician who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife. But Sarah Palin’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter made the front page of the newspaper today. You’d never know from the headlines and commentary over the last few days that the pregnancy bothers liberal commentators but not the religious right — at whom these stories are aimed. The left gleefully hoped that the pregnancy would depress this segment of the voter population. Of course, if they’d actually met a member of the religious right they’d have known better. (And on another page in the same newspaper, Lois Romano reaches a new low in campaign reporting" The McCain campaign said it could not confirm that Palin was still breastfeeding Trig…")

Only reason I'm posting on Bristol Palin's pregnancy at all is that it's giving us a re-run of what we've seen from the left and from the media establishment before. We saw it with Rudy Giuliani:

"Once again, the Democrats attempt to define the GOP not as it is, but as they wish it were."

Gay Patriot West is talking here about the DNC's desperate attempt to weaken Rudy Giuliani's candidacy for the White House by "highlight[ing] Giuliani’s stance on gay issues in order to play on the bias of social conservatives, assuming that these Republicans would never support a candidate with such a record." ...

And we saw it with Mary Cheney's baby:

It's because the liberal Left needs Archie Bunker. They can't deal with a rational, moderate, center-to-right mainstream; so they drag up the boogeymen they know they can defeat. And they have to convince their liberal audience, and themselves, that those Archie Bunkers are the threat to America that only they - the liberal establishment - can defeat. What a transparent farce. What an insult.

Byron York was at the Republican National Convention speaking with evangelicals on this issue (if it is an issue), and I'll let him - and the evangelical conservatives - have the last word:

When the day’s business was over, I drifted around the Colorado and Ohio delegations — two critical swing states — to get a feel for the delegates’ reaction. In the Colorado section, I ran into Sue Sharkey, from Windsor. When I asked what she thought, her reaction was not about Palin but herself.

“For me personally, it hit my heart this morning,” Sharkey told me, “because I was a 17 year-old girl, just like Sarah Palin’s daughter, and I had — I was in those shoes. And my son is with me, who will be 35 years old next week, and so I know what a difficult road there is for her.”

“I chose to have my son, and from that point I realized that I was a very strong right-to-life advocate,” Sharkey continued, her voice wavering ever so slightly. Roe v. Wade had been passed just the year before, and I already knew girls who were going through abortions. It wasn’t a choice for me; it wasn’t in my heart to do that. So when I heard the news this morning, it struck close to home for me.”

A few feet away, members of the Ohio delegation were finishing up business, and I asked Patricia Murray, a delegate from Cincinnati, what she thought. “I don’t even think this is an issue,” she told me. “It’s a family issue. It’s a personal issue. The only reason it was made public was because of her mother.” Nearby, Ben Rose, a delegate from Lima, said that, “In every case where I heard delegates talk about this, the first thought was to the human nature of it.”