Sarah Palin faking her fifth child's birth "is NOT a conspiracy."

Intrigued? Then read what Andrew Sullivan posted yesterday from reader, and friend of this blog, "Rationalist."

Your reader makes as compelling a case as I've seen for Palin actually having been pregnant, and barring other evidence I'd be inclined to think s/he is right. The kicker seems to be the conspiracy element. As with any conspiracy, one must ask how could people possibly keep quiet all this time?

Well, because it's not a conspiracy. In my view, it's just a sad, time-tested story of a very dysfunctional family, writ large.

If you really think about it, only three or four people would really have to know. If you'll indulge me a few paragraphs to offer a counter-theory, I'd be grateful.

Sarah Palin’s kids were typical Wasilla teenagers, partying a lot, more unsupervised than most because Palin was so busy and Todd was gone a lot. The Palin household was not close. Frank Bailey reported Palin telling him "Todd and I aren't like other couples. We don't talk." But the kids, like many kids in alcoholic or abusive families, were well trained to make everything look perfect to outsiders. This dynamic was enhanced by the Palin's celebrity and power and the fact that by all accounts Palin is secretive to an extreme, even to her parents. If Bristol is indeed the mother of Trig (which is by no means certain), she got pregnant when she was sixteen, but didn’t tell anyone until it was too late for an abortion, so the plan was to keep the pregnancy secret and adopt the baby out.

Palin’s ob-gyn, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, founded The Children’s Place in Alaska for victims of sexual assault and molestation, and specializes in helping teenagers in trouble. In early 2008, Palin’s name was out as a potential VP nominee, so the national spotlight was already beginning to hit – Vogue magazine did a photo essay about her and Adam Brickley's "Draft Sarah Palin" website was getting thousands of page views. Really bad timing for a pregnant teenage daughter.

Bristol was sent to live with her aunt halfway through her junior year, transferring from Juneau to West High School in Anchorage in the winter of 2007-2008. Then, according to the principal of West High, she left that school after a couple of months, theoretically to be home schooled. I suspect Bristol had Trig in late February, at home or possibly in Anchorage as an anonymous teenager - perhaps under the care of Dr. Baldwin-Johnson. But she was one of the small but real group of teenagers to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome, which threw a wrench in the adoption plans.

Trig stayed in the hospital in Anchorage and Bristol came home. Palin began to see a political opportunity in having a baby with Down Syndrome. The Palins decided that Sarah and Todd would adopt the baby and raise him as theirs, but they couldn't let the public know Bristol had been pregnant. Maybe Sarah’s doctor did not know about her plans either. Palin began wearing scarves all the time in mid-February. McCain got the nomination on March 5, and the next day Sarah went for it and gave a press conference saying she was seven months pregnant. No one could believe it. Perhaps even, I suspect, Palin's doctor.

She was planning to announce the birth in the middle of April, the earliest she could conceivably have a healthy baby, and the latest Trig would be able to pass as a newborn. But she really wanted to give the high profile speech in Dallas. So she gave flew there and gave it. On April 17th, she called her parents early in the morning and told her dad her water had broken so she was coming back early. If Palin was ever actually at Mat-Su hospital that night, then Cathy Baldwin-Johnson would have arranged for privacy for her high profile patient (a scenario that numerous nurses have reported happens with regularity).

In any event, at noon the next day, Palin's parents were photographed by KTUU in the halls holding a very chubby pink baby ... a baby that, according to Going Rogue, was a month premature with a hole in his heart and jaundice. No one would ever have been the wiser, except that in an interview three days later a reporter asked Palin if her water had broken while she was in Texas. Palin tried to deflect the question, and the reporter (the only reporter, I might add, who has ever asked Palin a pointed question on this) said "Well, your dad said that and I saw him say it so that’s why I asked." And out came the story of the Wild Ride.

After that, the doctor said "It was not unreasonable for her to fly back" with a lawyer present and then has refused all interviews since. And Bristol got knocked up sometime before April 1st with Tripp, which turned out to be very convenient for Palin as "proof" Bristol couldn't be the mother of Trig.

So. As the Internet heats up with arguments and counter arguments, I hope this will reinforce the difference between the Palin story and every other conspiracy I can think of. It's not a conspiracy.

Nicely done.  As most of you know I don't engage in attempts to create plausible scenarios for why Palin faked her pregnancy, or whether or not Bristol was pregnant and gave birth before Tripp's delivery, or what might have happened to the baby that was Trig before the toddler we now know to be Trig was Trig.

It is not because I DON'T wonder about those things, because I do.  It is because if I write one of them out, people might start to believe it is factual and I don't want to steer anybody in the wrong direction.

Having said that I think Rationalist's scenario is pretty believable.  I might have made a few alterations if I had written it, but it is not a bad summation of what we know, and what are possibly the missing pieces of the puzzle.

I do have a couple of oddly shaped pieces of this babygate puzzle that I don't yet know what to do with, that I hope I will be able to fit in at some point in the future, but until then what is written above is as good of an explanation as any other I have seen put forward thus far.

And yes I agree that calling our questions about this pregnancy a "conspiracy theory" is completely ridiculous, and indicates that the person using that term has paid little, or no attention to all of the troubling inconsistencies in this bizarre little saga.