Open Letter to PUMAs

I’m a conservative. Always have been. My first presidential vote was for Reagan, and I still believe that he had it right. I don’t mean that in a conservative vein. I don’t view life by that cut anymore. It’s too narrow.

President Reagan would not enter the Oval Office unless he was dressed in a suit, coat on. That’s not folk lore. I knew a woman on his Secret Service detail. That is fact.

It showed me basic respect, recognition of the weight of the office. He understood the importance of being president. He was humbled by it. His policies were not always the best. In fact, some sucked. But he had a vision that America was good, that Americans were good. He worked his vision into policies. He sought to empower people. And he said to people, “If you want to reside in the gutter, go for it. Let me know how it works out for you.”

Hillary has a view of America that I don’t always agree with. But I didn’t always agree with Reagan, either. Reagan said something, however, that I see in Hillary: “It’s amazing what can get done if you don’t care who gets credit.”

Hillary is a realist. While her policies may not always sit well with me, she knows that America is fundamentally sound. She knows that America needs to be tweaked to be better – not overhauled.

I see that in McCain. I see just the opposite in Obama.

McCain, to me, is still the fighter pilot. He takes the reins of a machine built by someone else. He guides and directs it to accomplish its mission. He suspended his campaign to ensure that all voices were being heard in the credit-crunch legislation. That spoke to me.

Obama thinks America, as designed, is wrong. He thinks our capitalist system is wrong. He thinks the Supreme Court of the United States should venture into social engineering. He thinks that success is a taxing opportunity. He thinks people will gleefully go to work 9 to 5 if only a job is handed to them. He thinks that all poor people need is a few thousand dollars to change their shitty outlook on life.

Do you remember when you started to drive a car? A common mistake lots of us, me included, made was to get startled and slam on the gas when we meant the brake. Why did we do that? Because we acted before we thought. After a few more near misses, we learned to assess the danger, and in the process move our right foot to the other pedal. Whew!

Obama is a kid asking for the keys to the car. Like a kid, he is telling us everything bad about the car – the muffler is too quiet, the speakers suck, the 0-60 is pathetic. So as a parent, I am sitting back thinking, “Tell me precisely why you want these keys?” and “Sorry, son, it’s the only car I have. I can’t afford another one. Sorry to be such a disappointment to you.”

Hurts when our kids view us like that, doesn’t it? But it’s all a part of being a parent.

What would Hillary or McCain do – continuing this analogy? McCain would promise to bring the car back in the same condition, tank full. Hillary would make a list of things she wanted to improve, and would figure out how to do it without costing me money.

Hillary and McCain solve problems. You and me, my PUMA friends, may not always agree on the list of problems that need to be solved, but therein lies our different world views. And different views are a good thing.

I view politics differently than I did just a year ago. And this is where you all come in. I realized that we have been allowing the inmates to run the prison. Our political leaders are employees, not the CEOs. They can’t hire or fire me – I do that to them.

I hire them to do a job. I tell them what town to work in. I tell them what office to sit in. I tell them what legislation to pass. I tell them when to go home and find a new job. I do all of this.

But I have been sitting here since 1980 with the wrong view. I was taught that liberals are big government, tax and spend idiots, and power-hungry self-dealing ho’s. Well, all of that is true. But it is also true of conservatives. And therein lies the problem.

We need to look to people like McCain and Hillary not for their different policies, but for their focus. We need to increase accountability on a finite basis. We need to tell people like Chris Dodd and John Bonier to kiss our ass and pack up. Federal work is not a place for you to enrich yourself, to place yourself above the law. You need a mortgage, asshole? Get in line.

I am tired of differing with my fellow Americans based upon ideology. I want to find the place where we agree on procedure – win elections fairly – and then we argue on substance. I want to find a place whose starting point is, “America is basically good. Let’s see what we can do to improve it.” I am tired of the dems telling you all that pubs are evil, and the pubs saying the same thing about dems.

To me, Obama is completely – without qualification - wrong. He wants to change the substance and procedure of our lives. I reject that to my very core.

Swallow hard if you must, but vote for McCain. Let this extreme Socialist Obama pass into the night from whence he came. He has no experience, and his ideas are repulsive.

Let’s find the way together to make this country better. I changed my party registration to Independent four years ago because the pubs no longer deserved to count me as a member. I think we all should do that. Make “Independent” the single largest voting bloc in the nation.

Then we can take this country back.

PS - Obama stole the nomination from you. The caucus system was a joke. The people in the party now tell you to stay home and not vote. I see all this, and you need to know something: It makes me just as angry as it makes you. There's two crime families running this town. Let's make a third one and take over.