McCain/Palin: The Handwringers, and why I have started despising conservo-blogs (VANITY)

I have spent a great deal of time today on the various conservative blogs, reading up on how John McCain's vote is "the deathknell" of his campaign. I have read on various conservative blogs that Sarah Palin supposedly has no chance because the deck is stacked against her, whether from the "Ifill Tower" or the "Couric Courant". I have read the reactions of people who are willing to hold back their votes, all because John McCain voted for a bailout bill.

I have becomed sickened by what I have seen in recent days, not only from those on the left who are trying to get their "Personal Jesus" elected, but also from those on the right who seem to think they know everything. Some of the names I've seen who think that McCain's campaign is dead: Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Sammon.

On blog sites like hotair.com, Ace of Spades, Patterico.com, Power Line Blog, and others, I see people wringing their hands and saying that the McCain campaign is nearly dead. They say it's nearly dead because either McCain's vote on the bailout was not what the people wanted (hotair.com), or it's what was good for the nation regardless of what the people want (Ace of Spades).

I even see people on here who are threatening to keep their votes because of this bailout bill. They cry about socialism becoming the norm in our country. I have news for these people: It's already here. It started in 1930 under a Republican, Herbert Hoover. It grew under Franklin Delano Roosevelt for 13 long years. And it grew under George W. Bush. The question is, do you want the full blown socialism to be halted for 4-8 years, and for a chance to get enough of a force together to push it back to where it came from? Or do you want it to permeate through America on the wave of "Hope and Change"?

We have a chance, regardless of the outcome of this bailout bill, to stave off a complete Marxist/Soviet-style state like Barack Obama wants. Even if it's only for 4 or 8 years, we still have enough blood and guts in our lives to fight back. But we cannot do it when we hold our votes back.

There are no true conservatives out there in this 2008 Presidential Race. Ron Paul gave his endorsement to Don Young, the largest pork-barrel recipient in the House of Representatives, and greased him family coffers with pork money. Bob Barr is not a conservative in any stretch of the imagination. Chuck Baldwin may be the closest to the idea, but do you really trust someone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, like he does?

John McCain is not perfect, but when you're dealing with a situation where you have someone who you agree with about 1/2 the time, against a marxist who you agree with none of the time, which are you going to choose? Because, frankly, a choice has to be made.

I have made some harsh statements on Free Republic recently, because I am frustrated at the people who seem to rely only on pure emotion to make their decisions, and not understand that there is a lot more at stake in this election than normal. That is why I ask as many of you here, even if you do not like John McCain, that you be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt especially in the upcoming 2 presidential debates, and to give Sarah Palin your full confidence in the VP debates and out there on the road.

The enemies that McCain and Palin are up against are not only the MSM, Democrats, The Bush Administration, The Global Community, but also the enemies within, also known as "The Establishment" like the names I listed a few paragraphs back. And we need to fight, even if we may not like it, to make certain that we have enough time to hold back a rushing tide of socialism that is coming at us in the form of Barack Hussein Obama. And if you don't fight for John McCain, then please, in God's name, fight on behalf of Sarah Palin.

I echo all your thoughts..

.It's expected to see phony neocon Georgetown cocktail drinkers and leftist crackpots and driveby media hacks tear into Mac and Palin for ANY reason...

, but its the absolutely disgusting and obscene the utter disregard many freepers have come to view our country....as a playground ripe for the huffing and puffing of blowhards, self-centered egotist that apparently DO NOT value the America left to us by hard working, hard fighting moms and dads.....

pitiful buffoons, wimpy whiny small minded, self absorbed elitist, worse than any leftist, or driveby, because THEY SHOULD KNOW BETTER....

and sadly, they are working themselves and this country into just what the fascist hussein wants: a dispirited, disheartened silent majority.....

McCain and Sarah Palin are very electable....its right there no matter what poll they throw at us....we need more seats in the Senate and House....we need more state houses and governorships...

as a quote from Patton, some of these freepers are simply shoveling sh^t in Louisiana.

I agree with your sentiments and echo your exhortation for all conservatives to gird up their loins and vote for McCain.

That being said, I would like to address a few of the reasons why we have found ourselves in a Hobson's choice where we must vote for the lesser of two evils because the greater evil- Obama- is so radical that he represents a real and present danger to the Republic.

Much of the blame for our dilemma can be laid at the feet of George Bush. I have published a vanity some years ago in which I asserted that George Bush regarded partisan politics as smarmy and that the true calling of the Christian- which animates Bush's calling to public service- is statesmanship. I think Bush regarded party politics as something that he must hold his nose and descend into if he were to be elected so that he could practice statesmanship which is something which is conducted above party. To the degree that I am right in this assessment, George Bush committed a fraud on the Republican Party. He solicited votes, support, volunteers, and money as a party man and a conservative but broke the bond with those people when in office. His acknowledgment while a candidate that he was a "compassionate conservative" does not in my judgment exonerate him.

Karl Rove conducted a press conference in which he was amazingly candid. He said that the greatest failing of the Bush administration was not to fight back after the WMDs were not found in Iraq in response to the Democrat attack that, "Bush lied people died." He further said that he advised Bush to fight his corner on this issue but Bush declined saying it was not worth it and would only distract from more important issues. I think this is fully in keeping with Bush's conception of himself as a Christian who rises above partisanship. He was content to let history judge him. But historians have very few votes. One can see much the same detachment play out in the comic bouffe around hurricane Katrina.

We all know about Bush's failure to wield his veto pen to halt spending and, worse, his actual affirmative support, for example, of massive entitlement programs and for sending billions to Africa. In his accumulated actions, Bush destroyed the philosophical foundation of his party and left Congress unled, undisciplined, and ripe for the corruption of K street. Under these circumstances, it was easy to predict the loss of the Congress in 2006 and many of us did predict it.

By the time the primary process rolled around, our party was philosophically and doctrinally bankrupt. We would not accept Romney because he was a Mormon, Giuliani because he wore a dress, Thompson because he was sleepwalking, Huckabee because he was insufficiently pure. Enter John McCain who's personal courage and tenacity won him the nomination but also put in place a man who, however sublime his character, is simply not a movement conservative.

So we have gone from a president who was ex officio titular head of the Republican Party who could give it no fixed pole and permitted it to disintegrate philosophically, fiscally, and morally. I believe that a president who does not behave in a partisan manner to protect his party is simply unpatriotic for without the party, there is no effective governance.

Now we have a nominee who is the titular head of the party who believes that it is a higher calling to be a maverick than to be a Republican just as George Bush believed it was a higher calling to be a statesman. I believe that McCain's commitment to bipartisanship is real and that it is the proximate result of the Epiphany he experienced in his cell in the Hanoi Hilton when he had a flash of insight: "I am no longer my own man, I am my country's". The result of this real and genuine Epiphany has moved the titular head of the party to a place where he cannot wholeheartedly wage partisan warfare on behalf of his ticket against some very scurrilous radicals. The moment might even be passed for such a strategy to work, even if McCain could bring himself to do it. Moreover, because Bush played rope a dope until his approval ratings went down into the 20th percentile, McCain risks defending a lost cause and being tainted by the Bush legacy should he become aggressively partisan. Unbelievably, we are handcuffed to the financial crisis and the scoundrels who are responsible are still in charge of the asylum. We are impotent because of the box we are in.

Such are the wages of Bush's elitism and detachment.

So, we have a refracted party whose only common bond is Sarah Palin and she may be destroyed tonight.

If this were only a plight of a political party all of this could be dismissed as crying in my beer but this is a moment of national crisis. We might actually be descending into a worldwide depression. We are increasingly assailed abroad. In office, Obama poses a potential of subverting our constitutional process. It is actually a plausible possibility that Obama will make common cause with our enemies. The Republic deserves to have an effective party arguing the conservative side of the issue. It does not. These are the wages of years of doctrinal debauchery.

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