McCain took the socially conservative, or faithful Catholics, even those who lean fiscally liberal. There are those of us who are conservative all round, but lets face it, many Catholics get the idea of personal charity taught by Christ mixed up with the need to impose it through government. Those people are not going to vote for a fiscal conservative if he isn’t right on life issues.

pannw on November 26, 2008 at 2:18 PM

There are many good Catholics and even evangelicals who voted for Obama because they didn’t realize just how radical his stance on abortion is. When the economy is as bad as it is, these people naturally gravitate back to their Democrat roots because they are blue collar types. They vote with the GOP because of life issues and because during better economic times they agree with GOP’s fiscal conservatism. Ironically, it was Chris Matthews in an old interview who best summed up how these moderate blue collar swing voters who have socially conservative values think. He said that in times of economic hardship they vote Democrat because they fear that they will be the next one our of a job and they will need big government’s help. In times of economic prosperity, they vote Republican because they see themselves as being the next one to get rich in an entrepreneurial boom.

Back in 1992, I volunteered at a Michigan Right to Life Get out the Vote phonathon. I was calling Michigan pro-life voters to get them to vote for Bush 41. Keep in mind: A) that Bush 41 had won Michigan in 1988 (riding on the huge coattails of Reagan and winning the support of Michigan’s legendary Reagan Democrats) and B) that these were self-identified pro-life voters. After that night, I knew in my gut that the election was lost. One person after another told me that the economy was hurting so badly that they were going to vote for Clinton. Besides that, they didn’t think Bush 41 was all that pro-life in the first place because look at that jerk Souter who he appointed to the Supreme Court.

That experience taught me two things. First, if the Republican Party ever abandons the pro-lifers, they can kiss goodbye any chance of winning a national election. Many blue collar conscientious values voters vote against their immediate economic interests in order to support pro-life Republicans. Second, I learned that when the economy is really really bad, these voters will find some way to bypass their consciences and vote for the Democrats or just sit the election out all together. They’ll say, “he’s not really all that pro-life anyway and besides, they’ll never be able to overturn Roe, so what’s the point?”

ramrocks on November 26, 2008 at 2:44 PM

Right, I’m bothered at the way Palin stepped out in front of a national media and did the folkey-thing, so I’m not really a conservative. I’m not saying she shouldn’t be REAL, I’m saying she shouldn’t give them the extra ammunition by playing to the base that is already going to love her.

fiscallyconservative on November 26, 2008 at 2:46 PM

It’s funny that you should assume that she’s “playing” to anybody. So many of the people who worked for her and who know her have said that what you see is what you get. She actually talks that way — with the “betchas” and “doggone its” in her interviews long before she made her appearance on the national stage. When Mark Levin declared on his radio show that “Sarah Palin is one of us” he was speaking the literal truth. She’s a conservative ditto head like many of us.

Take for example an letter to the editor she wrote to the Anchorage Daily News back in 1993:

Palin, then a Wasilla councilwoman]called the paper “dangerously biased” for its coverage of Sen. George Jacko, a key member of the Republican majority in Juneau. Jacko had been caught trying noisily to get into the room of a female legislative aide and was eventually censured by the Legislature.

“How can you justify your restraint in slamming the Clintons, Kennedys, Marion Barrys and other philandering, chauvinistic left-wingers of the world?” Palin wrote at the time. “Your yellow, liberal rag is so obvious. I pray we will someday have a choice in newspapers again.”

Or take this incident:

When federal judges in San Francisco ruled in 2002 that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because it included the phrase “under God,” Sarah Palin was not amused. Palin, who at the time was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, quickly drafted a terse letter to the editor of a San Francisco newspaper.

“Dear Editor,” Palin wrote in 2002. “San Francisco judges forbidding our Pledge of Allegiance? They will take the phrase ‘under God’ away from me when my cold, dead lips can no longer utter those words,” Palin wrote. “God Bless America,” she concluded.

Sounds just like the sort of thing any one of us would say. She is a conservative like us. That’s why we like her.

BTW, it would appear that she does in fact read newspapers seeing as how she is writing letters to them.

ramrocks on November 26, 2008 at 3:03 PM

I’m saying that she needs to step up to the plate and speak intelligently and authoritatively in front of the media. She’s running a highly-scrutinized national campaign!

fiscallyconservative on November 26, 2008 at 3:01 PM

She was actually the only one who did do that during this election. Four days before the election Palin gave an interview to Greta Van Susteren.

The folks at Commentary Magazine had this to say about it:

On Friday, Greta Van Susteren asked Sarah Palin for the best reason to vote against Barack Obama. Palin said, she “can’t ratchet is down to one,” but then gave a cogent critique of Obama’s economic vision:

I believe they are going to put this nation on a course that will erode the work ethic and the entrepreneurial spirit that has grown this country into the greatest country on earth. Because their idea of taking more from our families and more for government from our small businesses will kill job creation opportunities and it will kill that idea that you will be rewarded for your hard work ethic. Unfortunately that kills opportunity, too. for us to be generous and compassionate with our fellow Americans. The Democrats, it seems, on this ticket anyway, led by Barack Obama, seem to want government to mandate that we be generous and compassionate with one another via spreading the wealth. That is not the American way. We don’t need to go down that road. John McCain has a better idea that’s spreading opportunity by allowing our businesses to keep more of what they earn and produce so that they could hire more people, grow the economy that way, provide more for their employees…

On national security, she dubbed McCain the better choice “hands down,” citing his role in supporting the surge. She also threw this sharp elbow: “He is not one to invite this international crisis that Joe Biden is promising will happen if Barack Obama is elected.”

That’s the case in a nutshell for McCain. Someday, we will get to the bottom of the nefarious plot to keep the ticket’s most effective and engaging spokesperson under wraps. One wonders where the race would have been had she been doing this over and over again since September –or frankly, if John McCain had been this articulate on his own behalf in the debates

Someday we’ll also get to the bottom of why conservatives feel the need to destroy the one person in this election who actually tried to articulate their beliefs. Was it the accent or the high heels? Or the winks and the moose hunting? Was it one bad interview versus a stellar convention speech and debate performance? Was it a local cameraman too stupid to frame a shot to avoid viewing a turkey farm worker doing his job in the background of an impromptu press availability?

ramrocks on November 26, 2008 at 3:19 PM