The problem with the Republican party and McCain

As a break from my writing about politics, I had said I'd like to share now and then views from others. The following is something my daughter wrote in an email and shared with me. I might add I agree with all she says.

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As a bit of a disclaimer, I'm a life long Democrat, but I consider myself an Oregon Democrat and I think that is a little bit different. Oregon has a long tradition of voting more the person and less the party. We are a relatively liberal state (depending on the issues) that often voted Republican. Our best governor in recent history was a
Republican. We've had many good Senators and Representatives from both sides of the aisle - good people that I respected regardless of their party affiliation. I may not have always agreed with them on every issue, but I knew they voted on their principles and had logical reasons for their positions.

It has been many years, though, since I have felt that I could vote for a Republican candidate. What happened to the true conservatives that took care of the environment, believed in responsible (not necessarily small) government and minding their own business when it came to personal issues?

I am dismayed by the Republican Party's rejection of intellectuals and education. This is not only my view. Read David Brooks and Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley Jr.) just to name a couple. I feel that the Republican party has been hijacked by the neo-conservatives who want to use the U.S. military to shape the world to their view and the Religious Right. Using their agenda of fear and
"God, guns, and gays" they have grabbed a lot of power and consolidated huge amounts of money in the pockets of a few.

I have watched with dismay as the mantras that all taxes and all government are bad have gutted our school system, our libraries, public safety, and our infrastructure. As our schools have declined, roads and bridges disintegrated, and libraries closed, businesses have left our state or decided not to come. How can they get good employees to move here when we rank 49th in the country for number of school nurses (just to name one recent statistic)? Foreign businesses are moving their factories out and taking good paying jobs with them. How is this good for business or pro-business?

John McCain says that he stands separate from the Republican Party that has gotten us where we are now, maybe that was once even true. But his nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice-President says otherwise now. She stands firmly in both the neo-conservative and Religious Right camps. Just the thought of her as President sends chills down my spine. As a woman, I am insulted by her pick. There were many intelligent women who would have made good Vice-Presidents (Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia Snow, Christy Todd Whitman, etc.) but they would not have satisfied the Religious Right because they were too moderate and believe in individual choice and minding their own business.

Palin says she stands for cleaning up government, but after only 22 months as governor she is already embroiled in abuse of power investigations and possible wrong doing in per diem billing. They say this is only about politics, but these
investigations were started before she was even on the national radar. She completely lacks intellectual curiosity. I am tired of our national leaders sounding like B Western actors. I want someone who can speak intelligently about all the issues, not just the ones on the script. I could go on about this for hours. I feel very strongly that she is a horrible choice for our country. If John McCain really believes in putting country first, why did he put her on the ticket?

John McCain said that he thought this election was going to be about personality and character. I wanted to disagree with him and focus on the issues, but after some thought, I think he's right. Character does matter. I didn't like Bill Clinton when he originally ran (I voted for anyone else in the primary) because I thought he lacked good character and look how that all ended up. And I am not impressed by John McCain's character. I'll just skip, in the interest of good manners, the personal stuff about his marriages, but suffice it to say that he has not been any more of an exemplary family man than was Bill. I will, however, discuss my feelings about other aspects of his character.

John McCain, by his own admission, says he makes snap decisions, gut decisions, and then has to live the consequences of those choices. Well, that might be fine if you are only making decisions for yourself, but when you are President of the United States of America we all have to live with the consequences of your decisions. We've had "shoot from the hip" and "I've looked into his soul and feel I know the man" for the past 8 years and I'd like something different.

John McCain came from a privileged background as the son and grandson of admirals. He was a legacy into the Naval Academy, but instead of making the most of his good fortune, he squandered it. He has bragged, on more than one occasion, that he graduated at the bottom of his class, as if that is something of which to be proud. And that goes back to what I said earlier about the rejection of education and intellect.

Whatever his personal feelings are, he has let his campaign run a very nasty race. You can say that both sides are horrible, but a non partisan analysis of the ad campaigns of both candidates noted that 100% of John McCain ads in the last two months were negative as compared with 30% of Barack Obama's. And when Obama supporters or the media came out with things like Bristol Palin's pregnancy, Obama and Biden leaped all over them and denounced that tack at once.

When John Lewis compared the negative tone of the McCain campaign to the civil rights issues of the 60s, the Obama campaign came out immediately that day renouncing that stand. It took a negative backlash from the public before John McCain began reining in his supporters and he still hasn't done anything about
his running mate. (You know, she said recently that from the podium she
couldn't hear the comments like "Kill him". I might believe her if I hadn't heard her respond at one rally to similar cries "Wow, you guys really get it." I didn't read this on the internet, I heard it myself on the radio.) Presidential campaigns always get a little nasty, but this one has been pretty bad, and it takes a lot of gall to say your opponent's campaign is running a dirty race while yours is robo-calling and saying he pals around with terrorists. I also can't believe that John McCain would use this kind of tactics when they were used against him in 2000 by the Bush campaign. I think that it says something about his character.

I feel it is one thing to try to make your opponents' platform look bad and your own to look good. That's campaigning, I'm not crazy about it but I understand. But it quite something else to out and out lie about what your opponent plans to do. I feel that one of the things that has really bothered me about the Republican brand in recent years is their tactic of saying the same thing again and again regardless of its truth (like the "Bridge to Nowhere" schtick). It's like they believe that if they say it often enough we will be stupid enough to eventually believe it. I'm seeing a lot of that coming from the McCain campaign and I'm tired of it.

I feel that John McCain lacks the good character that I would like to have in my candidate for President. I'm sure we will never agree on all the issues, but as I said earlier, sometimes the heart of the person matters just as much.