Hurricane, Palin Roil the Start of GOP Convention

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GOP Convention Opens With Eye on Gustav

The Republican National Convention opened with news of Hurricane Gustav slamming the Gulf Coast. The first day's events were mostly canceled and the rest of the week remained up in the air.

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"I have said before and I will repeat again: I think people's families are off-limits," he said. "People's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories."

He continued: "You know, my mother had me when she was 18. How family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics. I hope that anybody who's supported me understands that's off-limits."

McCain campaign officials said the Palin family's statement was prompted in part by a spate of Internet rumors suggesting that Bristol Palin was actually the mother of Sarah Palin's 4-month-old son, Trig. They denounced the rumors and went on the offensive Monday morning when the news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy surfaced.

Late Monday morning, as the news was traveling through the convention hall, senior adviser Steve Schmidt and McCain confidant Mark Salter waded into the media center for informal conversations with reporters but were soon surrounded by journalists. The two conducted an impromptu 25-minute news conference, at which Schmidt was peppered with questions about when and what the campaign knew about the pregnancy.

McCain's team hit back at reporters' questions about the vetting process, and warned that Democrats would risk a major backlash if they tried to discredit Palin or diminish McCain as a result of her daughter's situation.

"It's a private family matter. Life happens in families," Schmidt said. "If people try to politicize this, the American people will be appalled by it. The fact is that the American people, who are decent people, don't appreciate intrusions into the private space of good families."

But some Republicans remained nervous about the party's ticket, worrying about the potential for more surprises in the days ahead. "Palin's daughter's pregnancy is probably much ado about nothing -- I think," one GOP strategist said. "If there's more, it will raise questions about the whole vetting process because she's such an unknown."

Another McCain loyalist said he doubts the controversy will last. "It came out in the vetting, and if that's true, then the vetting worked," he said. "If that's not true, then I would have concerns."

But McCain supporters are encouraged that leaders of the Christian right are rallying behind Palin and her family. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement: "We are committed to praying for Bristol and her husband-to-be and the entire Palin family as they walk through a very private matter in the eyes of the public."

Karl Rove, a former top political adviser to President Bush, played down the political fallout from the situation.

"A lot of Americans know families, if not their own, that have seen something like this," he said in an interview. "The question is: How does the family deal with it? What they have said is that she is going to carry the child to term and that she and the father are going to be married. A lot of people will look at this and put it through the filter of their own experiences and know that there are a lot of different ways families deal with it, and I think this will be seen at the end of the day as laudatory."

McCain campaign officials dismissed questions about whether there were serious second thoughts about the choice of Palin as his running mate. "There's a real solid sense of what our mission is," one official said.

The official then added: "We dealt with it like adults and kept our eye on the ball. She's working on her speech. The plan for the campaign that was drawn up before she was picked is being buttoned up and adapted to her strengths. We're about our business. We're introducing her to the American public and with that comes inquiries. . . . You've got a bunch of pros who've been through this."

McCain's team continued to express confidence that the choice of Palin will be seen as sound and politically smart. "She is, by any objective measure, more experienced and more accomplished than Senator Obama," Schmidt said.

Staff writers Robert Barnes, Shailagh Murray and Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.