Thursday, September 04, 2008

McCAIN DIVORCES HIMSELF FROM HIS OWN PARTY



From a reader on Andrew Sullivan's blog AndrewSullivan.com
Good God! I watched that video of Palin at her church through twice. The Assemblies of God are Pentecostals, of course, the real "holy rollers"--ecstatic experience of the Godhead in your own body, rolling in the aisles, talking in tongues. When I got some exposure to them, they were extremely conservative and strict (no dancing, no lipstick, no short skirts) but Palin is evidence of how they've mainstreamed themselves.

I wonder if the average reader would hear the references she makes and understand them? Master's commissions--this is a program they run to evangelize non-believers, in Alaska especially native Americans. Notice that our foreign and defense policy is simply God-given - not to be weighed, studied, deliberated, only to be implemented as we're taught by our betters. And notice that her political program - build a sports complex, a pipeline, change a tax bill, all likewise simply becomes a matter of religion.

For twenty years the most hardcore Christianists have been held in the background. Now one of them is the vice presidential nominee next to a man who's 72 and a repeated cancer survivor. This is mortifying. How could John McCain do this to our country!

McCAIN DIVORCES HIMSELF FROM BUSH-CHENEY-ROVE PARTY OF CORRUPTION

From Andew Sullivan's blog a reader writes:
Immediately after (McCain's) speech, I remarked to my wife that the tone of it was of a person looking back on a career, not beginning a new one.

Andrew Sullivan: What makes me sad is how so many young people have no idea any more what conservatism could mean if it were true to itself. (I gave it my best shot in my book, "The Conservative Soul.") But the corruption of this party is so deep - morally, ethically, philosophically - McCain can't do it.

I'm sure conservatism will one day recover - because it is right about the main issues: government needs to be kept in its place, taxes should be low and budgets balanced, individuals should be able to pursue their dreams as free of government control as possible, families do matter and need to be free from government interference, free markets and enterprise are the only guarantees of prosperity, moral choices - and their consequences - should be faced by the individual responsibly, and we have to be strong in our defense and prudent in foreign policy. This is the conservatism I still believe in. Deep down, I'm sure McCain does too. But it will only come from the ashes of this fundamentalist, mean-spirited, parochial, arrogant, big-spending, irresponsible shambles of a party. We have to repudiate the party of Rove and Abramoff and Romney and Dobson and Cheney and Bush II.

Burn it down and start over.