It's Time

With McCain trailing in the polls in Iowa by a fairly large margin, Iowa Republicans need to get serious about this election. Even if you still think of McCain as McCan’t, he is at the top of the ticket and a major loss by him will take other good Republicans down.

We have great Congressional candidates along with a very young and promising Senatorial candidate in Chris Reed. We also have many die hard conservative Iowa House and Senate candidates that need a strong showing by McCain to win.

We don’t need McCain here to do it but we do need Sarah Palin. She is our motivation this election cycle and with her principles, conservatives can be proud to volunteer for their candidates and county party organizations. I know we need to get the conservatives in northwest Iowa ramped up. If you remember, Bush visited NW Iowa a couple times before the election in 2004 and barely carried the state. Palin can do the same in 2008.

McCain campaign, if you are listening…here is your formal invitation to Iowa!

Who’s Hot, Who’s Not

Who’s Hot:

McCain is red hot after picking Gov. Sarah Palin for his VP candidate. She’s young, attractive, and very fiscally and socially conservative. Way to go John.

Sarah Palin is smoking hot! She’s got everything America needs.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks has some great coattails now with the McCain-Palin combo at the top of the ticket!

Obama is lukewarm. His convention, according to Gallop tracking polls, gave him a slight bump. Problem for him is the latest poll has the McCain-Palin ticket by 2 points.

ANWR – with Palin in favor of drilling in ANWR we can expect more support for new domestic oil.

Who’s Not:

Hillary Clinton is about as cold as you can get. She’s finally done and with her, the Clinton dynasty all but dies.

Mitt Romney is getting colder every second. Without the VP pick, he’s got eight years off. I’m sure he’ll be back but it will be a long time from now.

David Hartsuch is fairly cool as well. He needs to get out there and get some votes. I don’t know what he is doing right now, but I know it isn’t running for Congress.

Finally!

As an active volunteering conservative, I feel like I finally got a bone thrown my way by the McCain camp. He could have picked Ridge, Romney, Pawlenty, Lieberman or another establishment running mate. But McCain gave conservatives a reason to get out and work for him, not just against Obama.

Palin is an up-and-comer in the Republican Party. She has taken on corruption at many levels and even in her own party. She looks at a budget and doesn’t just cut the fat; Palin takes her lifetime NRA membership trigger figure and blows holes in it.

Palin is just as socially conservative as she is fiscally conservative. She is pro-life and pro-marriage. She has five children, one has Down syndrome and one enlisted in the Army on September 11, 2007.

By choosing Palin as his running mate, McCain has leveled the political playing field. Obama is the first African American presidential nominee. Palin is the first female GOP running mate. McCain’s Achilles heel of age is neutralized by the youth and energy of Palin. Obama’s grey-haired DC insider running mate is opposed by a true change-agent who has changed the status quo.

I can feel the adrenaline rushing through the GOP as our enthusiasm raises with McCain’s brilliant VP pick. On to November!

McCain's VP Pick

McCain’s pick today will determine if he has a shot at winning this election. If he screws up and picks anybody less than conservative he just as well pick one of his seven houses to live in for the next four years.

Just heard Romney is out – thank the good Lord. Also heard Pawlenty is out. Alright, who’s next? That narrows it down to Palin or Lieberman or maybe a surprise pick. I’m waiting with a sense of doom. I don’t trust McCain’s judgement – I never have.

I’m rooting for a conservative dark horse or Palin. She has been a budget hawk and takes transparency in government to a new level. Her downside, she only brings three electoral votes from Alaska. On the other hand, her gender will ratchet up interest in the ticket and be an equalizer in that regard.

Speck in the GOP's Eye - Log in the Left's

While the GOP in Iowa suffers from allegations of splits among the ranks, our supposed riffs pale in comparison to the goings-on planned for Denver.

Obama’s concession to Hillary, allowing her name to be placed in nomination and the subsequent roll call vote, serves as demonstrable evidence of the chasm on the left. Hillary and her minions refusal to let go of what might-have-been in favor of the Obamanation coronation shows their weakness.

We should embrace Hillary’s tactics and reinforce the divide. Call it exploitation if you will. It’s a skill we will have learned from our opponents.

When Hillary and Bill speak, their tone and substance will be important to observe. Will they be belligerent or reconciliatory? Will they promote self or the party? Will they cede their one-time prominence to the upstart messiah?

In the bigger picture, Obama’s gaffes continue to escalate elsewhere.

- Floundering at Saddleback – proving his reliance on the teleprompter and weak-kneed convictions
- Rejecting his own mantra of change by selecting Biden as VP for more of the same
- Taking a very public vacation in paradise
- Underreacting to Russia’s Georgian offensive

Lead on McCain. The door is opening and you must be prepared to walk through boldly, demonstrating your innate leadership and qualifications to lead this greatest nation on earth.

Obama's vs. McCain's Stance on Life

New McCain Ad - "The One"

Lesser of Two Evils...Again

There isn’t a conservative out there who hasn’t struggled with voting for a candidate who didn’t represent their ideology closely enough. In 2004, many conservatives voted for W while holding their noses. We know this is part of the process and we won’t always get our way. In fact, there are only a few elections where I have gotten my way. The most recent of those elections was in 2002 when Congressman Steve King won the four-way primary.

Typically the two party system works, but in any system there are always hiccups. For conservatives, McCain is not only a hiccup, he turns us into bulimics. Conservatives won’t forget McCain’s immigration stance or the Gang of 14. We won’t forget McCain is in favor of embryonic stem cell research and buddies up with Ted Kennedy on “bi-partisan” legislation. It boils down to being confident McCain is going to run harder to the left than he already has and ruin the Republican Party on the way.

We are sick of voting for the lesser of two evils. If we do win, our party, and more importantly our country, will be damaged in the long run. In the past eight years, W and Republican leadership in Congress have stripped the fiscal responsibility mantra of the Republican Party away forever when it was once our badge of honor. We also had our chance to shift the tide of socialism and we actually accelerated it.

Many conservatives voted and worked diligently for W’s election and re-election so we could get back the Supreme Court. We are now faced with the same battle all over again. I’m tired of it, but what can I do? I honestly don’t know the best route to take.

If McCain wins, our party crumbles. If McCain loses, we lose in Iraq and the Supreme Court will be liberal for many future generations. Yet our party may find this the only opportunity to survive for a few more years. Under a Democratic presidency, disastrous as it would be, there is the possibility Republicans will start reading the platform and return to the sound principles which led us to success in 1994 and drained into obscurity in 2006.