St. Paul, Mn. — There's something very strange going on here.

For the purpose of this column, let's first remove Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, from the discussion. Her ordeal is not part of the public's business.

But it seems to me that her mother has some explaining to do.

Sarah Palin knew her daughter was pregnant well before she was asked to join the McCain ticket. She knew that because of her bid to get to the White House, her daughter's most painful private ordeal would inevitably be thrown into the cauldron of the campaign, and that Bristol's life would never be the same. She could have turned down the offer to join McCain's ticket, and saved her daughter and her family from world wide scrutiny and from some quarters, ridicule. But she didn't.

Why would a mother do that to her child? Was her ambition so great that she was prepared to throw her daughter under the bus of presidential politics? The answer appears to be yes.

Palin needs to tell Americans why that was an acceptable choice, and more, she needs to tell voters what it says about her moral and ethical compass.

If we take John McCain at his word -- that he knew about this ahead of time -- then the same questions might be asked of him. What did he think would happen to Bristol? Did he care? What was his plan to manage the uproar?

Now if he didn't know, and there are increasing signs that maybe he didn't, then why not? What happened to the vetting process? Would she have kept this from the presidential candidate, and how dumb would that be?

There's no evidence at all that Sarah Palin's place on the ticket is going to be pulled. In fact, she's the biggest thing to hit this party in a while. She's also a major money magnet, bringing in more than $10-million in her first two days as the vice presidential choice.

But here's how it could unspool.

It's no coincidence that at this moment some heavyweight Republican advisors are winging their way to Alaska, to manage whatever information may still come out about Palin. If there is something else, and it's big, and McCain didn't know, then watch out.

McCain has, shall we say, a bit of a temper, and he might hand her a speech that goes something like this:

"I am appalled at the lack of respect and privacy shown by the media, to my family and my daughter Bristol at this very trying time in her life. To protect her, I am withdrawing my name from the Republican ticket."

I'm not saying that will happen, but if it does, you read it here first.