McCain Ain't Happenin'

I used to be a devoted listener to sportscaster Steve "The Homer" True when he was on the old WISN-AM1130 morning show with Don Vogel, Jay Weber, and Ann Catalane. "Homer" had a saying "I'm a homer. I'm not an idiot."

That's how I feel as a conservative and a nominal Republican.

Don't go trying to tell me that McCain is a conservative. He most certainly is not. For one thing, the man has always reached out to Democrats but never to conservatives. That alone should tell you something. At the very best he is only a "nominal conservative". A look at his American Conservative Union ratings show that at best he is in the 80's (out of 100). The guy's "maverick" streak only seems to go one way: Over to the Democrats. He's never been a maverick who is more conservative than the Republican Party--as was, for example, Bob Barr. And don't get me started on the assault on the Constitution that is the McCain-Feingold law. All that law did was empower news media outlets at the expense of individual rights. His steadfast opposition to drilling in ANWR, or anyplace else in the USA for that matter, is going to come back to haunt him and already has. He's having to modify his stance already.

But my biggest problem with McCain is McCain himself. He loves himself too much. He's unwilling to sacrifice himself . Ronald Reagan didn't mind being on the receiving end of scorn and ridicule, especially that coming from the press. McCain, on the other hand, is loathe to get on the news media's bad side. He so much wants their favor that he will sacrifice anything to get it. He won't point out Obama's shortcomings, he says that he won't attack (wanna bet Obama will attack and already has), he's accepted global warming as an incontrovertible fact, he even attacks those conservatives that the news media decides are wrong.

So, I don't who I'm going to vote for. But for certain I won't be voting for either McCain or Obama. When it comes to McCain being labeled a conservative, I think back to that great Western epic "The Outlaw Josey Wales" where John Vernon's character Fletcher tells the Senator: "...Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."