Does it bother you guys over at Broadsheet as much as it does me that the longer this goes on, the more evident it is that Palin's major qualification for VP to them was that she is the Ultimate Distraction? Her entire purpose seems to be to distract from the actual issues of the campaign. Have an October Wedding in order to "shut down the campaign for an entire week?" Because attempting to shut it down for the economy last week wasn't enough? (I'm somewhere between having a mental meltdown over this, and feeling intensely sorry for Palin's daughter for being used this way.)

An unnamed source inside the McCain campaign told Baxter, "It would be fantastic. You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

I can't decide whether this person is deluded, or if they hope to delude someone over at the Obama campaign. The attention would last for far less than a week, and much of what attention it did get would be people trying to figure out who's holding the shotgun.

A wedding as political theater? Wow, that's really family values.

Uh, yeah. Who do these people think she is, Princess Diana? Everyone pretty much knows it's a shotgun wedding, in order to change the scenery for John McCain. And the MSM will say so, over and over again, just like they did when McCain RUSHED to Washington. It's a stunt, and everyone knows it. What's sad and pathetic is that Palin would actually put her own child through this. And you KNOW she will.

since I myself sent them some money, so one of the thank-you notes will be from me. But as for the rest of the speculation... I have to agree with those who say it's better to talk about other topics. If Bristol gets married in October, so be it.

Yep, a big church wedding with the clearly pregnant bride (WEaring White of course) would be just the thing...

Here's the problem you can either go big or small on the show for the cameras.

Go big, (Vera Wang Maternity wedding dress, Horse Drawn Sleigh, et al) you lose the common touch, go to small (VFW Hall reception and K-Mart off the rack gown) and it smacks of had to get married in a rush, which might not be a good thing to remind values voters so soon before the election.

Also, although such a stunt might create good feeling it likely won't translate into votes.

No, my money for McCain October Reboot is replacement of Sarah with Joe Lieberman some time after the debate.

That won't help much either, but hey when your grasping at straws might as well grasp at the big ones.

...except of course when there is an advantage in using them?

If the governor and her first dude allow their poor daughter to yet again become a tool in the presidential campaign, they are infinitely more disgusting than even imagined. Please, could the evangelical women who say that Sarah P. "speaks to them" weigh in on this. I so hope this isn't true. it turns my stomach.

So the US equivalent of Diana & Charles is... Bristol & Levi?

Ok, I know we're not as elegant as the British, but even coming from a rural town, I think we have more dignity than that.

How to underscore that your candidacy is a total embarrassment - take time out from your non-appearances to marry off your pregnant kid to her pugnacious yet whipped teen boyfriend. They may not grasp how many of us feel, even if we approve of her decision to keep the baby, what a horrible mistake it is to marry at 17. (or 15, or whatever the hell those 2 are)

The [shotgun] wedding of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is the ultimate in not only hypocrisy, but shows just how far Mama Palin is willing to deny choice to women (and apparently children) -- that includes her own daughter getting to choose when and who she wants to love and be married to, child or no. Shame on Palin and the abuse she has already inflicted upon a minor child by turning her own child into a publicly humiliated international spectacle and a campaign tool. Shame on her. Should she choose to do a wedding as an October surprise to distract the country? We should all think very hard about filing an official complaint with the Alaska Department of Child Protective Services.

...but you can't make them stop crying.

What great video that would be, if Bristol, Levi or both were weeping openly as they said their vows.

I'm wondering if this wedding is Palin's attempt to insure the McCain campaign doesn't dump her.

Maybe we are to be totally subdued too? I hope the Death March ends. An historian may say with truth... in any age people are inclined to admire even those vices of violence and tyranny that are thrust in front of poor us...?...

The worst list of Vice can be compiled.

Devoid of Virtues? Are we in that age?

It's comprehensible? Sincere people...?

We admire violence, arrogance, and befriend this? I say`No gorge, but... it seems a degree of a worst traits of human nature. `Paraded.

Wars, injustices, bigotry,`O HYPOCRISY!

Rapacity of the treasury, `LIE. Profusion.

Caprice. Confusion. Cruelness. Calamity.

In degrees, any persons` loves affection.

Truth should not be subdued, ever ever.

Bristol Palin weeping at the altar while her young swain is kayaking madly across the Bering Strait.

Perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part. (And I wouldn't derive any joy from Bristol's weeping, I just don't think the two of them getting married will do either of them, or the baby, much good.)

Don't kid yourself, where a highly-publicized wedding is concerned, going big is ALWAYS the right choice. The big "fairytale" wedding concept has a visceral pull for a surprising number of women.

Also, they can go enormous without APPEARING to do so...take the sleigh, but the Vera Wang has been "donated," or they will "auction it off for charity" after, or whatever. Hold it at the governor's mansion, or the Alaska capitol building, anywhere ornate that the public could reasonably expect them to use because of her mother's office. Some really nice open space in Wasilla, lake/mountains/caribou/whatever behind them (if they don't have to be bundled in parkas), would work, too.

Reception: barbequed moose and Alaskan salmon, with an open bar in a nice banquet hall (again, capitol or gov's mansion would work, probably).