JOHN MCCAIN

Just when I am about to convince myself to vote for McCain, he opens his mouth. I know the man was tortured in Vietnam, but I don’t know how he can consider water boarding to be anywhere in the realm of the kind of torture the Viet-Cong used on him. As President of the United States, your primary responsibility is to protect American citizens, yet if a terrorist knew where a nuclear bomb was planted and we needed that information to save thousands, possibly millions of Americans, John McCain would not use whatever means necessary to secure that information because he is worried about what the rest of the world would think of us. That is dereliction of duty in my book.

John McCain wants to shut down Guantanamo Bay and bring the terrorists to the mainland. He wants to shut down the military installation - that allows the Muslim prisoners to pray three times a day, and feeds them honey-glazed chicken and lemon-baked fish - because the rest of the world seems to think we torture prisoners there. I am sick of our domestic policies being decided based on what the rest of the world thinks of us. Obviously the terrorists who are not part of a regular army, who behead their captives and are not opposed to using women and children as human shields do not fall under the regulations of the Geneva convention (and do not follow Geneva convention either).

It is the responsibility of our political leaders to protect this country. That is their primary duty. Liberals appear to feel more compassion for the terrorists caught in the act of trying to kill (or successfully killing) our soldiers than they do for our soldiers. The same soldiers that they (Democrats and Republicans) sent to this war in the first place. McCain appears to be more with them than against them. He may have suffered a lot for this country, but he apparently is more concerned about what Europe thinks of him than he is about keeping this country secure. His ego is so big, that I have yet to see him make any kind of outreach to conservatives.

McCain may very well win this election with the Democrat contest becoming more and more divisive, even with a lot of conservatives sitting out the election. I don’t think there is one conservative issue that McCain hasn’t compromised in his Senate seat. He is pro-life but supports embryonic stem-cell research. He is pro-guns but supported putting the government in charge of private gun shows and enabling the government to deny permits without cause. He is pro-victory in Iraq, but wants to close Gitmo and move the terrorists to the mainland where they will be tried in public courts instead of military tribunals even though trying them will compromise our intelligence. He is pro-tax cuts but called the Bush tax cuts "tax cuts for the rich" (a liberal mantra). He is pro-free speech but sponsored the campaign finance laws that were supposed to remove the influence of money in campaigns. Instead these laws quash free speech during political campaigns and allow billionaire-socialists like George Soros to have more influence than they ever had before.

I keep hearing so-called conservatives telling me that I should support John McCain because he is better than the other choices. But when I hear our candidate giving speeches that sound more like Jack Murtha and Ted Kennedy than like Ronald Reagan, I start to feel very leery about giving control of our party to such a person. To me it is a bit more than holding my nose and voting for McCain. It is more like swallowing a bucket of excrement while trying to keep a smile on my face. So far, I just can’t convince myself that the end result will be worth the misery.