The Democrat and Republican facing off for the Sandy House seat have crosswise perspectives on life. It makes sense they would have different views of the Alaska governor's acceptance of John McCain's invitation to run for

vice president.

Like most Republicans, Christensen sees a chance to make Palin's candidacy - her 4-month-old special needs baby and 17-year-old pregnant daughter - a morality tale that reinforces the "sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage." The self-appointed protector of Utah family values, Christensen wants to give Palin a big hug for choosing the right.

But Beck, herself the mother of a child with Down syndrome, is more cautious. While Republicans abandon decades of well-honed talking points against working mothers, Beck is thinking of Trig Palin. She stops just short of questioning his mother's choice.

"I don't think we should be judging a person," Beck says. But Palin's newly high-profile political career "is a fine line to walk."

Me, I'm going to second-guess. As a woman and a feminist, it hurts me to say this: It's not a question of whether a mother of young children can run for vice president. It's a question of whether this one, in particular, should.

All of this is politically incorrect - reducing a female politician to her decisions as a mother. It lets her husband Todd - and every other male politician with a special needs child or a pregnant teenager - off the hook.

Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson was caught in then-Mayor Rocky Anderson's sexist double-standard when she ran for mayor last year. "I don't think the question should be asked unless we are asking the question of men as well," Wilson says.

Normally, I would stop there. But I didn't make Palin's historic Republican candidacy about her indoor plumbing and what she decides to do with it; John McCain and evangelical voters did. I'm only applying the family values guidelines conservatives refined over decades of culture war-mongering to package Murphy Brown and Gennifer Flowers and Britney Spears.

Under those rules, Palin's decisions as a mother are fair game. And she seems to be sacrificing two of her five children - after birth, of course - to her own political aspirations.

First, the most vulnerable: the baby.

Beck lobbied the Legislature to establish an early intervention program for special-needs children. The first three years in a disabled baby's life are most critical, she says. Her own son had the heart problems so common among babies with Down syndrome and some malformed body parts. Beck knows the hours, years really, of sign language and speech and physical therapy Trig Palin will need. She moved her travel agency office into the playroom.

Her son Richard is now an independent 25-year-old with a job. Beck stops just short of questioning Palin's decision.

"I wouldn't trade this little boy for anything," she says. "It hasn't been easy. But I'm so grateful I dedicated that time to him."

Palin is almost too late to help her other child in need: the 17-year-old girl she apparently taught "abstinence only" but not how to use a condom, just in case.

Knowing her daughter would be the center of a media firestorm, Palin uncloseted that skeleton in the middle of a hurricane on a national holiday and then begged for privacy. The governor who cut funding for programs for unwed mothers now is tidying up her daughter's little mess with a shotgun wedding to a self-described "f---in' redneck" boy from back home in Wasilla. "I don't want kids," he wrote on his MySpace page. Mom to the rescue.

Republican Party hacks have wrapped Palin in a cloak of phony feminism to try to deflect any criticism of her choices. They've abandoned the moral majority's tried-and-true litmus tests for their "Trophy Vice."

In one respect, Palin validates everything conservatives believe about feminists. By surrendering her children's privacy and her own time with them when they need her most, she is just like a male politician.

That's not motherhood. That's narcissism.

walsh@sltrib.com