I spent 20 years in uniform. In 20 years, I was betrayed. I swore an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic'. While I 'manned the walls', somebody let the enemies under the walls and into the courtyard: fellow countrymen have allowed internal rot to erode the force & effect of the constitution I defended. Outright betrayal.

Still, a point to amplify: betrayal from arrogance 'reaching across the aisle' to the usual liberal suspects.

As a conservative, I have a memory that I'm not afraid to use. I remember the lies & duplicities of liberals & outright admitted socialists, of 'compassionate conservatives', and of would-be conservatives who behave as if having tumbled gyroscopes for their Jiminy Crickets. Being conservative also means I believe in an immutable standard of right versus wrong, that I'm not ashamed to call a lie a lie, and that I insist all should stick to the agreed rules, like the constitution ... or leave us.

No, the 80% change I want is to take the kid gloves off against those who throw mud to see what sticks. I want to lose the politically correct veneer: the politics of personal destruction is NOT in calling a lie a lie, it's in telling the lie in the first place. Those who speak plainly, unashamed to point out the lies, those are the candidates I'm willing to vote for and support. Conservatism does this. Conservatives will send a Packwood packing just as quickly as sending away a Studds, while the liars will join against Packwood, but circle wagons around a Studds. 

Most of America doesn't give a hoot about 'partisan politics' so much as we want integrity we can trust ... integrity that forbids betrayal. ENOUGH with lies and all the rest of Relative Morality's hidden praise of duplicity!

Conservative victory, the phoenix of integrity ... we need it.

Anybody ever notice that Republican success in national elections is directly related to how conservative the Republican is???!!! ('DumbOxBellowed' blog shows details in a featured essay.)

I wish the 2008 ticket was Palin-Anybody, with a cabinet including Thompson, Gingrich, Alexander, Keyes, DeLay, Lott, Santorum, Thune, etc. (I remember how some of them were tarred & feathered, run out of DC on a rail, then exonerated. THAT is the politics of personal destruction.) No human is perfect, but a cabinet like those names would probably keep each other true to politics of service, away from politics of self-embellishing duplicity. 

It was liberals who enabled – mandated – Fannie & Freddie & all the rest, to create this mess. Obama’s record and intentions are like his fellow liberals: more government to solve a problem created by too much government already.  How can this crisis possibly be benefitting Obama???  Does nobody know the truth???  Possible.  McCain sure isn't telling the real story.  Broadcast media sure won't.  Obama Campaign certainly has nothing to gain, everything to lose ... from truth.

B. The Guilty Parties.

The way it seems to have played out: 

   1. Liberals mandated that Fannie, Freddie, and other banks must find ways to qualify folks with very low incomes and no significant savings, to give them mortgages they couldn’t possibly ever pay off – whether the former standard mortgage or the newfangled interest-only mortgage. Politicians, like Frank, Pelosi, and the rest, must have gone home with such a warm glow that night: they'd legislated wealth redistribution, and corporate America not only has to absorb the price, but also the effort of generation & oversight, and bear the ‘burden of proof of enough low-income mortgages’ to regulators!

   2. Liberals mandated that Fannie, Freddie, and other banks be legally allowed to write mortgages for interest-only payments. Wow! American dream! And banks didn’t fuss too much either … Occupant gets a house much bigger & plusher than he can ever pay for, because his legal mortgage payments are now within his budget … even though he’ll never actually own the house since you never pay a dollar towards principal! Banks write mortgages for homes they never relinquish title to. Wow! Anybody heard of ‘rent’? Always wanted my landlord to be my bank … so I can pay for all the repairs myself …

   3. Then the mortgage bubble starts growing. Ordinary folks seeking ordinary homes financed with ordinary mortgages find the prices getting sky-high for the value of home to be gotten. But all the national economic numbers were looking up, with more & more Americans became homeowners … of homes they’d never be able to pay for and truly own.  

C. Other solutions.

Why couldn’t we just free up money for credit without a government buy-up? 

     - We could indefinitely suspend corporate taxes, assuring executives they’d have at least a 3-month notice before a phase-back-in would commence. 

     - We could terminate all capital gains taxes.  What good are capital gains taxes when the economy is tanked and there are no gains to generate taxes on anyway? Yet, free up the expectation of losing all that cash to tax, and you conversely increase incentive to invest, thus investors ‘find’ cash for loans and all that …

E. How it *could* happen. But won’t.

It seems McCain & Palin would fight corruption in DC.  Probably won't get the chance.

    - But McCain won’t allow the campaign to raise their voices now, naming names. 

Conclusion: insanity.

Insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, and expecting a different result.

    - Politicians want us to believe the government bailout will solve the problem of too much government involvement. Insanity.

    - McCain wants to believe he can remain his old conservative-confounding, liberal-enabling self, and somehow win in November 2008. Insanity.

Dear Presidential Hopefuls:

A President Obama scares me. I spent twenty years in uniform to fight socialists – violent revolutionaries bent on government control & power in the name of Worker’s Paradise. That was two decades of my life to fight these enemies, whether foreign or domestic. 

But a President McCain doesn’t inspire me, and hardly even reassures me. Frankly, a political history like his is one of appeasing liberals on their pet issues, while not even achieving quid-pro-quo from them.  His ilk have not been political champions in the fight against socialist revolution, especially not against their political usurpations within our own borders. Even in this 2008 election, Sen McCain's ilk have proved wimps when disavowing state-level political ads that dared to tell the unvarnished truth about opponents; they were concentrating on cream-puff ads. We will see if recent changes in Sen McCain's ad styles remain, and we will see how he heals with damage caused by prior disavowals & distancings.

Yes, I want “change”.  But I want change the opposite direction from which Republicans & Democrats alike have been going in the last five years. I like a stand against earmarks. But that doesn't go far enough. I want change of the kind that boldly proclaims, and ACTS, to get the Federal government smaller overall. I want change that refocuses the Federal government from wealth-redistribution to governmental chores that equally benefit all citizens: national defense (including military, border, and strategic materials), internal infrastructure (interstate roads, rails, bridges), space exploration (with environment favorable not just to NASA), international trade agreements (especially to account for foreign governmental subsidies and slave-labor), parental freedom to raise & educate their own children, the constitutional right of ALL men to live from conception to natural death (unless one proves to be an uncontrollable menace to others’ right to live), and a judicial system that actually punishes offenders (so they never want to come back to jail/prison).

In 2008, as always, the highly sought ‘moderate vote’ won’t matter much.

1. The three voting blocks: liberals, moderates, conservatives

 - Democrat base (liberals)

                -- Obama will win the liberal vote. He’s one of them. Sure, other liberal margin candidates will take some of the liberal vote, but Obama has all the credentials to secure that liberal vote pretty solidly. The Democrat’s liberal base is very active, measured by percentage of voters who actually vote.  They’re going to break for the most liberal candidate that can plausibly win, whether Green Party or Democrat party.  They won’t vote McCain.

                -- McCain won’t win the Democrat base, no matter how much he fancies himself a unifier or any similar stupid buzz phrase.  Liberals, the Democrat base, will like McCain only as far as they can use him, and only when a liberal Democrat is unavailable.  We face no shortage of liberal Democrat politicians.  Writing’s on the wall.  McCain won’t get the liberal Democrat vote no matter how many times he facilitates liberal agendas with his crossing over.  The base is too liberal; McCain cannot possibly be liberal enough to outshine established & credentialed liberal candidates.

- Undeclared voters (moderates)

                -- Moderates, indeed, probably form the majority of American citizens.  But it matters not.  ‘Voters who vote’ is what matters. Seldom has a national election even achieved energizing 60% of eligible voters.  In most all USA elections, only half or less  of eligible voters actually find the desire to vote. 

                -- It’s a truism that most undeclared voters don’t declare because they also don’t care enough to vote.  Mostly, moderates are not declared for any party, nor even as ‘independent’. 

                --  Let’s discuss ‘independents’. Independents are generally either liberal or conservative, to some degree, but disaffected from their nominal party of similar thinkers. Independents, though, when energized by a strong candidate, tend to vote their nominal party affiliation, when push comes to shove, no matter their official ‘independent’ status. Otherwise, Independents show their disaffection by simply not voting. 

                -- Winning the moderates is a dead-end that only leads to de-energizing one’s base, and losing the election.   It really doesn’t matter, to win the ‘moderates’.  This is merely a Potempkin Village, no matter that Republicans have been seeking it since Bush Sr foolishly abandoned the coalition electing his predecessor. 

- Republican base (conservatives)

-- McCain must strike enough conservatism to be a standard-bearer for the Republican base. The problem:  McCain is stuck on ‘reaching across the aisle’, no matter how foolish it makes him look to all but him.  His foolishness is, in part, an ability to consistently pick the wrong fights during which to cross the aisle.  Beyond that, conservatives have marked the liberals’ tendency to work with conservatives who decide to partner with them on liberal issues, without any reciprocal partnering on conservative issues.

-- McCain can, perhaps, strike enough conservatism to be a standard-bearer for Democrats who finally see their party is far more liberal than ever. McCain can ‘convert’ Democrats who are upstanding citizens, who believe in the civic responsibility to be politically active, who uphold traditional American values. He must show them they are too conservative for the party they’ve traditionally given allegiance to. But people who have habits will change those habits only when the incongruence is pointed out, and an alternative shown to them. This requires plain speaking, and details.

-- McCain may have time to pick fights more carefully, more prudently; there may still be time with which to capitalize on his ability to put trust in adversaries.

2. Different federal offices

 - Presidency. 

                -- As things stand now, McCain can win.  Can.  Not ‘will’.  He must sling truth hard, loudly, and with as much certainty as his opponent (and co-travelers) slings the mud of half-truths, vague platitudes, and other lies.  No need for lies nor dirty tricks, no matter how tempting, just paint his socialist opponent precisely as socialist as he is. 

-- If McCain can at least stand up enough to be willing to call a lie a lie, and to allow publicists to point them out, then he can possibly generate sufficient conservative enthusiasm.  Thus is a method of a true conservative.   This is the method for a Republican to win.

 - Coat tails. 

                -- Incumbency will be strong, our system has become one in which the elected powers attempt to secure their power. Incumbents have demonstrated amazing ability to cling to office regardless of opinion polls showing approval ratings in single digits. With Republicans still trending to the policies that lost them the 2006 elections, liberals are gaining seats in purple districts/states, maybe even in a bunch of red ones (like the special elections show).   

                -- Coat tails probably exist only for the Democrat, but remain McCain’s to win too. McCain is not a slogan any conservative can use for re-election. But McCain is not a slogan any moderate Republican can use either, due to realities among the three voting blocks.

3. Conclusion: 

 - Givens.

                -- There are lots of liberal voters who vote. 

                -- There are lots of conservative voters who vote. 

                -- There are fewer moderate voters who vote. 

                -- Seeking the moderates is as foolish as seeking the fringe extreme on either the liberal or conservative sides; it tends to alienate the mainstream liberal and the mainstream conservative voters, wherein lies the bulk of votes available.

 - A method to McCain & Republican victory, even with their (plural) vote-de-energizing problem:  

                -- McCain should point out a new realization that reaching across the aisle is far easier when from a position of strength. He must illustrate -- long & loud -- how he, Candidate McCain as Senator McCain, has demonstrated solid conservative principles by doing A, B, and C, even while learning hard lessons -- after the fact -- about power positions when eschewing conservative principles while doing D and E.  It’s gotta be loud and unrelenting, since Senator McCain specifically, and congress generally, are seen to be just as the book new mentions:  ‘wimps to the right’.   

                -- McCain, and Republican Party generally, have a large order to fill, trying to demonstrate conservatism after so many liberal Republican maneuvers in the last several years.  Trite as it sounds, and as likely as liberals will rail against it:  “truth, justice, and the American way!”, and “this is no time for pale pastels, paint with bold colors.” Though Napoleon stood for many principles antithetical to American values, he was nevertheless one of history’s best motivators of populations. How? Well, Napoleon is reputed to have said, “A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day, nor for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul, in order to electrify him.” 

                -- Republicans tend to win in direct proportion to how conservative they make themselves. Capture the USA’s increasing numbers of conservatives in 3 groups (Republican Party, of recent departure from Republican Party, Reagan Democrats).  McCain must electrify all who are conservative, even those who don’t yet realize they are or how liberal their current political party has become. That’s the only way. 

 - Winning the conservatives’ energy is how a Republican wins. Seeking the ‘moderate vote’ is a Potempkin Village.

 - Duck Archer