Up Front
No Quarter, via Classical Values:
But there is a very strange air about Republican operatives. In the last three weeks, I’ve talked to real insiders in VA, GA, AL and here. They all remind me of a unit waiting to cross the line of departure on an attack. Quiet, determined, last cigarette, last “can of peaches out of the ration,” radio checks, confident. They all use the term “safely nominated” when referring to Obama.
Republican operatives want Obama “safely nominated”.
I am very, very shy of making predictions or gloating or any such thing this early in the game, particularly given my belief that the major news media are very much in the bag for Obama. There is no semblance of “fair and balanced”. They’re going to be doing their level best to get Obama elected.
The fact is, however, that McCain and the Republicans have pretty much stayed out of the fight so far. They’re rested and ready, or ought to be, while Obama will have just finished a hell of a fight with his own party.
Here are the two Convention podiums:
Seriously, now. Which one of those looks like you’re supposed to pay attention to the Man and what he says, and which one looks like you’re supposed to pay attention to the dazzle, that the man will just be another prop?
Which one looks like it belongs in a serious campaign of ideas, and which one looks like it belongs in a Hollywood awards party, or a Red China international sports rally?
[disclosure: the lower picture is a computer-generated mockup; the actual stage is apparently not yet complete.]
I have to reiterate, as I will often in the next few months, that I am not in McCain’s camp. He scares me for a lot of reasons that would make no sense at all to Obama supporters. (”McCain: the best Democrat in the race!”)
For the first time in my life, if I vote, it will be furtively. I will be ashamed to have cast a ballot, for anybody. This will very likely be the last national election I ever vote in, because I strongly suspect that whoever he is, the next President will prove that elections no longer matter, that The People are no longer in control of the political process.
I’ve been getting McCain campaign solicitations in the mail. They disgust me, they are so far off the mark. One of the early ones was done up to look like an official government document, and essentially ordered me to fill out the survey, and send McCain money. (Granted, it was immediately followed up by more ingratiating efforts.)
I’m pretty convinced that I will be voting for a guy who thinks my vote will give him permission to decide which of my rights I’ll be allowed to exercise, and by how much. Nuh-uh. I want to vote for the guy who will uphold his oath to defend my rights, as embodied in the Constitution, but that guy is not running.
However, Obama is the scariest candidate I’ve ever seen. He has virtually no experience. He’s Daley Machine Extruded Political Product, the embodiment of that Chicago slaughter-yard sausage you don’t want to see being made. His advisors and confidants are thugs and racist, anti-American Communists.
He’s a puppet, and the people pulling the strings are terrifying. They are not interested in letting me have any rights — they want to rule.
Tags: democratic national convention, dnc, McCain, Obama, republican national convention, rnc