Hating and Voting for McCain

Well, antipathy's more accurate in my case, but I think Randall Hoven has my position pretty much correctly:

In short, some of us think preserving a party that truly represents conservative values is more important for the long term than just having someone in the White House with an ACU rating somewhere north of 8.


If McCain were trying to morph the Republican Party into Democrat-Lite, I would not vote for him. He could have demonstrated that by picking a Vice President like Joe Lieberman. Nothing wrong with Joe, but he's not a Republican. He thinks life is improved through government programs. Republicans think government usually is the problem, not the solution.


But McCain did not pick Joe Lieberman or anyone like that. He picked Sarah Palin.


And that changed everything.


Sarah Palin is pro-freedom, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-spending. And she walks the walk. Her life story is pure American -- even old-time, frontier American. We can compare experience levels in years of "public service": her 12 to Barack Obama's 11. But more importantly, Obama's experience consists mostly of missing a lot of votes so he could write a second autobiography and make speeches, while Palin's includes negotiating a gas pipeline deal with Canada and confronting Big Oil face-to-face and making it blink.


Sarah Palin also represents real reform in government. Not just reform in the sense of ethics rules, but reform in the sense of getting back to the days where elected officials were normal people recognized for their real-world leadership, not professional politicians, usually lawyers, adept at making good excuses, not good decisions. Alexis de Tocqueville would recognize her as an American: a Bible in one pocket and a newspaper in the other.


And because she is so young, John McCain showed us the future of the Republican party. It's even more choice that Palin's nemesis in Alaskan politics is Senator Ted Stevens, the oldest, whitest, pork-barrelest, and now indicted, Republican in the Senate. McCain made it clear: out with the Stevens, in with the Palins. I am down with that.


In a stroke, McCain showed us his vision of the Republican party, and it is not Democrat-Lite. And the base knew it right away. On the day he announced Palin as his VP choice, $4 million flew into his campaign from internet contributions. The previous daily high was under $1 million. What does that tell you about what the Republican base thinks of Sarah Palin?