<i>Republicans rocked as Palin says teen daughter pregnant </i>
Bristol Palin, 17, (L) and her sister Willow Palin, 14, carrying their baby brother Trig, get off the Straight Talk Express campaign bus at the airport in St Louis, Missouri on August 31. Bristol, one of Republican vice-presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's five children, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said on Monday in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.Photo: AFP
Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin revealed Monday her unmarried teenaged daughter is pregnant, in the latest bombshell to rock the party's Hurricane Gustav-curtailed convention.
Palin said her daughter Bristol, 17, would have the baby and marry its father, as the convention held a shortened first day, shorn of political rhetoric out of respect for those sheltering from Gustav's wrath.
The curtailed convention will cost presumptive nominee John McCain some of his precious opportunity to take his unfiltered case to US voters, a week after his Democratic rival Barack Obama's spectacular jamboree in Denver.
A new CBS/New York Times poll on Monday suggested that McCain needed a boost, putting Obama and his vice presidential pick Joseph Biden up 48 percent to 40 percent, ahead of the November 4 election.
McCain's surprise choice of Palin as his running mate last week electrified the Republican Party's social conservative base, in particular evangelical Christians who had been reluctant to back McCain.
And early signs suggested that powerbase was still intact for Palin, a 44-year-old abortion foe, despite the revelations about her daughter.
"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned," she said in a statement with her husband Todd.
"We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support," they said.
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