This is the kind of message that John McCain needs to be getting out there . . . rhetoric vs. reality. The rhetoric of Barrack Obama vs. the reality of McCain's entire career. For all the "change" that Obama's been promising, its McCain who has fought and won change over and over his entire Senate career.
As for Republican candidates across the country, this kind of campaign - for country - is one that all factions can rally around without being bound to some of McCain's more moderate views. If Republican candidates can attach themselves to McCain in the manner of his personal popularity. Make this about experience, about what the country will face with a president in training pants. We don't have to love McCain, we just have to respect him. In close Senate races with GOP incumbents (Sununu of New Hampshire, Smith of Oregon, and Coleman of Minnesota come to mind), McCain has the caliber of appeal that can help these three come across the finish line. In open races here in Virginia and in Colorado, McCain's kind of appeal can really help the brand and with two candidates (Schaeffer and Gilmore) who are coming from behind but are in traditional red states. Furthermore, its hard to link Schaffer and Gilmore to Bush because one retired in '03 and the other in '02
But its up to McCain to embrace his ticket mates and help them. McCain needs to start showing voters who like him that he needs senators like Sununu, Coleman, Smith, Gilmore, and Schaffer to help put America back on track through experience and knowledge rather than taking a flyer on America's most least-prepared presidential candidate in all of her glorious history. I'm worried that McCain has bought into the strategy of electing himself first and resigning himself to a Democrat Congress (one that reminds us of Richard Nixon, who won reelection with every state in America but one, yet failed to bring a Republican Congress with him, and he didn't seem to care). McCain's great purpose, in my opinion, is to finish the war Bush has wages courageously for seven years. The War on Terror has never been unpopular with Republicans, and McCain can dovetail his personal popularity with moderates and independents with conservatives who believe defeating Islamo-Fascism is America's paramount mission of the 21st Century.
Building the McCain Alliance will require a lot of people to swallow a lot of pride. But it must be done for our candidates and for our countries. Because, and I believe this to my core, that its this party's mission to keep the world free; and as patriotic as the other side is, I just believe their September 10th view of the world is wrongheaded. The rush to military isolationism, a theory of force replaced by words, is dangerous when dealing with an enemy who speaks solely in force. And whatever you think about John McCain, he is the Republican Party's most potent spokesman for this particular cause. Its okay that Jim Gilmore and John McCain disagree on immigration and ANWR, we can have that fight here. But lets have that fight with a President McCain rather than being wholly defeated as the steamroller of Obama-style socialism cripples America.
For this party to stave off disaster, a disaster that will be much more than a political setback, I urge every activist who can hear my voice and read these words to put aside - for the moment - the things you dislike about Senator McCain and understand the consequences of and Obama Presidency that will once again use small issues of social justice to domestically hypnotize us and once again fall asleep to the threat that shadows our existence. John McCain, as his own personal history shows, will defend this country and has defended it in every step of his life. Whether flying bomb missions, being tortured so others can go free before him, to entering academia and government, and finally in his service as a congressman and a senator; John McCain has, as tacky as it sounds, fought for his country.
I've been asked a lot how a conservative like me can be such a strident McCain supporter now. It really is quite easy when you think of it like I have laid out here. I plan on working to build that McCain Alliance.
