(thanks to David Flanders for this one)
It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for untruths. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged.... She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was John McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.... Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead America out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.
Intelligent, discerning people understand the concept that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. If you apply this concept to John McCain, you'd quickly come to see him as a political opportunist willing to do whatever he thinks it will take to put him in the White House. When his first major decision was to select Mooselini as his running mate, any reasonable person had to know that "Country First" was little more than blatant bulls--t propaganda designed to deceive the gullible into thinking that McCain actually cares about this country more than his own self-aggrandizement and political ambition.
I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you that Barack Obama is The One. I believe that he's the best and only answer in this campaign, but when he takes the oath of office on 1.20.09, he's going to have his work cut out for him. What I am here to tell you is that John McCain is most definitely NOT the solution to the grave problems currently facing this country. To call him "erratic" wouldn't begin to do justice to the ineptitude and venality of his campaign...and it has nothing to do with his age. It has everything to do with the fact and the reality that John McCain has become so blinded by his own ambition that he's willing to do anything- lie, prevaricate, propagandize, and engage in some serious race-baiting- no matter how underhanded or dishonest in order to win. Simply put, the man has no soul, no conscience, and no judgment.
What Garrison Keillor has done is make this argument in a manner far more eloquent than I could...and he's spot on. If you seriously believe that John McCain is a leader and a man of honor, and that his choice of Sarah Palin is indicative of sound judgment and sober reflection...well, how about you just stay home on Election Day? Because you clearly don't care enough to take a good look around and see what's being done to this country by John McCain and his fellow Republithugs.
Pay attention. Make a difference. And send the message that being President is about more than "fear and smear" and race-baiting. It's not about ACORN, or William Ayers, or even Jeremiah Wright. It's about how we reclaim this country from the incompetence and the thuggery that have ruled for the past eight years. It's about making this country great again. It's about reintroducing America to the rest of the world as a caring, involved member of the international community.
This is serious, y'all. Do the right thing.
