Why McCain Lost

John Stallings


Anyone whose read my blogs of late will know I would have done almost anything to spare my country from the nightmare that is Barack Hussein Obama.

I wish I could have done more. They say when people go through stressful situations there are several steps they experience in the process. I can’t remember them all but I know the first one is denial. I’m past that step & hover somewhere over the next steps, whatever they are. Is “Spastic colon” a choice?

Before I proceed, let me say that if John McCain had won the election, I would expect the opposition to give him a chance & in the interest of national unity give him the opportunity to implement his policies. I plan to do that for Obama & am sure you will too.

Having said that, I’d like to vent a little bit & tell you why I feel John McCain lost his bid for the White House. I don’t know if I have two friends left, [if I ever had any] but I’m sure if I do I will lose them with this blog. Oh well!

Sadly for my country, I realized long ago that McCain’s resemblance to Methuselah’s granddaddy wasn’t going to play well because in our society looks matter much more than what you believe or what you’ve done. Please don’t think me insensitive here because that would be like the pot calling the kettle black.

The –lipstick/pig analogy isn’t new to this generation. From the time I was young I heard my friends say only partially in jest; “Old Stallings trying to improve his looks is like a hog putting on lipstick.” Or- “Old Stallings can’t help how he looks but he could stay home.” Or- “Stallings fell out of the ugly tree & hit every limb on the way down.” I’ve learned to live with that but please don’t think it doesn’t still hurt when I wear sun- glasses and all I hear is Roy Orbison. Whatever.

Here it is; McCain is a good & decent man & he’s certainly a hero but having said that; McCain lost because he’s McCain. He’s always been best known for his cooperation with Democrats, reaching across the aisle to embrace Big Government.

Let’s go back. For the last twenty years McCain basked in the adoration of the mainstream media. He spent so much time making alliances with the left that he forgot how to fight them if he ever knew. Can anyone say—RINO- Republican In Name Only??


The media loved him & bestowed “Maverick” on him because they loved it when a man seemed to betray his party. [Does anyone remember “Campaign Finance Reform?”?] My friend McCain shot a few of his own toes off with that one. Probably thinking him a fence-straddler, then the likes of the fickle New York Times grew bored with McCain & found other fish to fry. Hint: Obama!

Let’s be honest; if the media was all that powerful-as many of us seem to believe, why have GOP candidates won five of the last eight presidential elections?

Remember the concept of complacency? That’s where our friend McCain lost it all, -- “How could anyone brush aside a man whose been in the Senate 22 years & choose a man with questionable connections over me?” But the voters did.

Political novice that I am, I shook in my boots when McCain suspended his campaign & rushed back to Washington in September to vote for the $700-billion bailout package for financial institutions. My thought after this was; why should any borrower be responsible for his debts? The only difference between McCain & Obama’s programs was the wrapping.
Do you remember in 2007 when McCain & his buddy Ted Kennedy co-sponsored a bill to “regularize the status” of roughly 12 million “undocumented workers?” Out of this fiasco two-thirds of Hispanics voted for Obama.

MARRIAGE—here, McCain’s record was mixed. He voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment each time it came before the Senate, but said he supported state marriage initiatives.

But, to my chagrin, this was one of the many social issues that McCain refused to discuss on the campaign trail even though Obama promised to repeal the Federal Defense of Marriage act [DOMA] which says states don’t have to recognize same-sex unions contracted elsewhere.

FLORIDA--Let’s look at my state of Florida. If McCain had increased his vote here by roughly 98,000—in other words, if he’d picked up 12% of the pro-marriage votes he didn’t get—he’d have won Florida’s 27 electoral votes.

Never mind that I thought McCain uncovering Obama’s campaign for gay marriage might have helped him—McCain didn’t think so.

JEREMIAH A WRIGHT—it was published in no less than NEWSWEEK that McCain had refused to discuss Obama’s racist’s pastor.

Sarah Palin believed the campaign should remind voters of Obama’s ties to Wright, whose inflammatory sermons emerged as a problem for the Democratic nominee during the primary. A McCain aide said—“If we were to go with an ad during the final weeks of this campaign showing excerpts of Wright’s sermons preached in a church where Obama & his wife contributed $26,000 in one year, we would probably win- but we won’t.”

McCain wouldn’t touch the issue so he chose sensitivity over the presidency, & in my opinion he let conservatives down. I hope you’ll forgive my seeming insensitivity here but I suppose McCain will not long from now totter off to a rest home feeling good about “not taking the low road to the White House” leaving the rest of us & our progeny to twist in the wind.

IMHO McCain let his supporters down by running a campaign without brains, heart or guts.

If you’ve read my blogs you’ll know that in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, I think McCain made his first & last really smart move. Other than that he was equivocal, hesitant, passionless & lacking in any real focus or genuine commitment to principles.

Maybe McCain’s best gift to the Republican Party is the political exile that lies ahead.

Maybe we’ll learn to fight again for our principles.

Maybe we’ll discover anew that we can’t compromise with an enemy that hates us & despises everything this country used to stand for.

Maybe this defeat will be John McCain’s most important contribution to his country since the Vietnam War.

Blessings,

John