I was reading someone's blog yesterday, the author, like me, is from a "Deep South" state. He wrote a long, very long treatise on why all the polls are wrong and why McCain will still win the Presidency. Maybe so. Anything can happen. But to spend all one's energy wishin' and a-hopin' for a McCain victory is to miss the much larger, and much more important point. McCain is a Republican, and the Republicans don't deserve to win the White House.
I'm sure the blog author and I were raised in a similar environment: small town values that taught us that if you work hard, and play by the rules, the rewards will come. But on the other hand, if you mess up very badly on a job, you'll probably be fired. No great shame; you just slink away, learn your lesson, and come back a better, stronger person. Pretty simple stuff, right? Kind of like "My Pet Goat". Then can someone please explain to me why so many millions of people, especially in the South, are so ready to keep John McCain and his Republicans on the job?
I really don't get it. Whatever happened to that old-fashioned, small town notion that the incompetent are fired, not re-hired? In my world, McCain and the Republicans don't deserve to win this election, they messed up pretty badly on the job for the past eight years. Are the people who plan to vote Republican living in a different world?
If you think McCain and his Republicans deserve to win this election, your thinking must fall into one of three categories: 1. You don't think the Republicans have screwed up the past eight years, or 2. You somehow think that McCain's people won't be the same Republicans who caused all the problems of the past eight years, or 3. You're a mental deficient.
If you believe #1., wow. A disastrous foreign policy, a wrecked economy and an incompetent grasp of social issues is not messing up? What would be "messing up" to you then? No, don't tell me, let's just say that people a whole lot smarter than you, you know, those people that were home reading books while you were out a-huntin' moose, i.e. historians, scientiests, sociologists, economists, etc., are all telling us that George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever. Ever. Worse than Buchanan, Fillmore, Pierce, oh never mind, you were asleep during history class. Let's just say it's a safe bet that in my hometown, George Bush would have been fired a long time ago.
Or if you believe #2. What, do you think McCain's going to create a mystical, magical "Third Party" of people from which to populate his staff and the Congress who will have no relation to the current Republican Party? Keep dreaming. McCain was a die hard member of the Grand Old Party for the past eight years, and his people will be their people. Maverick? Right. A maverick who voted 92% of the time with George Bush. Hell, he hired some of the same people who slimed him in South Carolina in 2000 to run his campaign in '08. McCain has always been part of the same Republican Party who gave us Iraq, deregulation, Terri Schiavo, etc., and he always will be.
Or if you're #3, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be voting.
So when I vote this year, I'm going back to those same, small town values with which I was raised to guide me. If the Democrat and the Republican are both working at my grocery store in my hometown, and I need to promote one of them to manager, which do I choose? The Democrat has done well, he's been smart, steady, reliable; while the Republican can't count change, has gotten drunk, stole from my cash register and tried to run off with my wife. Hmm, which do I choose? It's such a tough decision.
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