john mccain

First, a hearty congratulations to President-elect Obama. With a compelling life story, a strong message, and a superb ground game, he seized a moment in history. And, he gave us Republicans a thorough pasting. In many ways, we deserved it.

Already, the fight for the party's soul is on. The hard right has already begun plotting a campaign to push the party further to the margins of the spectrum. Those of us on the center-right had better fight back.

Because, as Margaret Thatcher once said, politics is like an airplane. The right and left wings may provide lift, but the middle is where the brains are. Alas, ...

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Rural values, family, and tradition are the warp and woof of conservative messaging. For better or worse, Sarah Palin has hit those hot buttons repeatedly at campaign rallies where the cultural prejudices of Big Media windbags are distinctly unwelcome.

Nothing could be more destructive of those conservative values than mountaintop removal coal mining. The high explosives and draglines that are gouging an alien topography onto West Virginia and neighboring states also are butchering old ways of life in the mountains.

The Bush administration has proposed a rule that would exacerbate the damage by easing stream buffering requirements. Since those requirements are largely honored in the breach, the rule would legitimize what has been going on anyway.

But it's not just Republicans who kowtow to mountaintop removal. At a Society of Environmental Journalists conference October 18, Congressman Nick Rahall, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, listed all the great things that flattened mountains can be used for. Imagine the shopping centers ...

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One of the media wise guys said before the vice presidential debate that it was like a NASCAR race – a good percentage of the fans came to see one or both candidates hit the wall and spin out.

The thrill-seekers were disappointed. Sarah Palin, the newest of newcomers on the national scene, held her own against Senate veteran Joe Biden, who seems to have been a DC figure since the Ice Age.

After a painful patch of bad interviews, Palin reverted to her appealing, just-plain-folks form, cheerfully punctured the pompousness of DC insiders, answered the questions, and even gave Biden a little chin music that scored a few hits.

For his part, Biden...

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You had to be there.

Once Sarah Palin stepped to the microphone, the reasons for her extraordinary appeal to Republican faithful and for the impression that she made on John McCain became instantly apparent.

Even veteran commentators jaded by political windbaggery likened her to Ronald Reagan, the gold standard of GOP charisma. Best speech at a GOP convention in years, they said.

That’s not media hyperbole. The hockey mom’s command of the audience in the St. Paul hockey arena was real, even from up in the rafters where I was seated. Those who dismiss Palin as a former beauty queen chosen for her double-X chromosomes do so at their peril. They'll be wondering what just hit them. Just ask Frank Murkowski and Tony Knowles, the veteran Alaska pols whom Palin flattened.

Quite a promotion for a former small town mayor and governor of a faraway state who could have walked incognito down any street in the lower 48 only one week before.

Yes, yes, say environmentalists, but look at her record of promoting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, her doubts about the human imprint on climate change, and her state government’s opposition to listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Her energy policy is all about drilling rigs and pipelines. Their fear is that she will cast a spell on McCain and make him change his mind about climate change and the Arctic refuge. ...

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Politics had something to do with the draft Republican platform including an acknowledgment that human activities play a role in global climate change and not including a call for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The politicos decided it wouldn’t be politic to adopt a platform that contradicts their presidential candidate’s views favoring climate legislation and opposing Arctic drilling.

The muttering was palpable. One of the platform committee members, Jeff Grossman of Oregon, said that John McCain has some catching up to do with the rest of the party on drilling the refuge.

In John McCain’s Navy, that’s known as insubordination. An ensign who tells the admiral to get with the program will swiftly find himself reassigned to new quarters in the brig. Grossman, it’s you who needs to get with McCain’s program, not the other way around.

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