Likelihood of Success

Well McCain just chose Palin and as a father of two little girls, and as a husband of a black woman, I can tell ya straight out that this is really whipping up the women folk around me. I suspect it will whip up the women folk just about everywhere. As in real excited.

At lunch the girls and I watched her give her coming out speech and her performance was excellent. I still don’t know a whole lot about her, but what I have learned about her and her family is pretty impressive, given her age. She seems to share a lot of values in common with me personally, and she seems like a stand-up gal. She’s as good looking as the summer day is long too. She ain’t hard on the eyes, that’s for durn sure. And that’s my kinda gal too.

From her credentials I could accept her as President, she seems tough enough, strong enough, classy enough, and capable enough.

You know though this has been the single most interesting Presidential race I’ve seen since Reagan pounded Carter. (And I’ve been participating in politics for awhile, and this race is just fascinating to me.) In the past I’ve never really been a McCain man and truth be told I’ve always been kinda suspicious of him. I just didn’t really trust him, and part of me still doesn’t.

But I have to admit that the man has run the single best, and I mean single best Presidential Campaign I’ve ever seen. He and his strategists are just simply politically brilliant. They’ve hamstrung the Democrats at every step even during the period when the Dems should have been at the top of the mast. But McCain keeps chopping the mast down before the Dems ever get close to the crow’s nest. From a political point of view it is almost phenomenal the tactics employed. This campaign should be studied for years to come as a sort of lesson learned in the Judo politics: Take a strength and make the other guy use it against himself. If McCain and his team could govern the same way he campaigns, well hell, he’d be a modern marvel. I sure do like fellas who can turn not only the other guy’s weaknesses against him, but can exploit the seeming strengths of the other guy and make him eat those too. That’s exactly what we’ll need against the Ruskies and Al Qaeda. (Maybe the Chinese too. We’ll see.) But you don’t just hit a man where he ain’t, you hit a man where he is, and if you hit smart enough and long enough and hard enough then all his seemingly impressive armor is just a liability that weighs him down and won’t let him escape in time. If McCain is that kinda clever, and given this campaign and his early start on the Surge sorta proves that he might be, then I can’t say it would break my heart none, especially given the nature of our enemies.

Something about McCain still sorta eludes me, and I’m still sorta wary of him, but with picks like this and campaign tactics like he is employing, I’ve gotta admit out loud now, that I’m beginning to really admire the man, maybe even grow some affection for him.

Now we’ll see what Palin is like too. From what I’ve seen so far though, she sure seems to be the right man for the job. And I believe a lot of Repubs and Independents could ride into office on the coat-tails of McCain and Palin. An awful lot. As a matter of fact McCain and Palin could end up reshaping the Repubs in a way that no-one else could. It’s like “only Nixon could go to China.” Except in this case I suspect that both McCain and Palin are far better men than Nixon.

John Hawkins, whose Right Wing News blog is, he says, one of the 15 largest conservative blogs, has been shut out of the GOP convention.  Why?

My best guess as to why I’m not being allowed to go to the RNC is a post I wrote back in March called, “Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President.” The piece savagely denounced McCain for his breathtakingly dishonest flip-flop over illegal immigration, was widely linked, and a source of mine inside the campaign told me they were very aware of it.

Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if there were some hard feelings over at the Republican National Committee because of some of the things I’ve written; so it’s possible someone over there put the kibosh on me.

There was the time I did a short interview with RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, thought his answers to 4 out of the 5 questions I asked him weren’t very good, and only ran the answer to one question. I’ve also criticized them for supporting RINOs in the primaries, for refusing to try to even the playing field for conservatives in the presidential primaries, and for generally moving backwards since Ken Mehlman left.

Well, okay, those are reasons.  John clearly is not broken up over it and, as he says, the show must go on.  Being true to his principles is certainly preferable to being coopted.