Is it true, as the pundits are telling us, that the conservative base is now for McCain?

A female reader writes:

Why does everyone keep saying that McCain has shored up the Republican base, or that the Republican base is now convinced that Obama must be opposed? How can that be? I am a solid conservative who has voted Republican since the second Reagan election, and who thought I would vote Republican for the rest of my life. Yet I am thinking seriously of voting for Obama, because a McCain presidency would be a disaster for conservatism.

There are a lot of issues to consider, but here is one which may sound small but is important to me. I’d prefer a president who is still on his first wife (I always exempt Reagan on that point for the well known reason that his first wife left him flat and lonely), and would prefer a first lady who was relatively close in age to her husband and was the wife of his youth, instead of a trophy wife who looks like his daughter or granddaughter, as is the case with Cindy McCain.

LA replies:

Cindy McCain, born May 20, 1954, is 18 years younger than her husband. But with her cosmetic surgery and blonde hair coloring and long-haired, teenage hair style, she looks more like 30 years younger. Oddly, however, even though 54 is young in today’s world, the effect created by the surgery and the brittle blonde hair is not of youth, but of a pinched, frozen version of a Stepford wife.

- end of initial entry -

John B. writes:

I know many white women who live in urban neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly black and dangerous and that will only become more so should Obama be elected. I’m sure they would be pleased to know that your reader is prepared to protect them from an inadequate model of conjugal sobriety.

Rose H. writes:

If a “female reader” is seriously considering voting for Obama over McCain simply because of McCain’s divorce, it’s an illustration of why females should not have the vote. Obama is a more hardcore socialist/Marxist than McCain—he just comes across as more smooth-talking. In my opinion, a “solid conservative” votes for neither.

LA replies:

My own position is to oppose McCain by not voting for either candidate. But many people don’t like a vacuum; they want to vote for somebody. Therefore, since they want McCain to lose, they’ll vote for Obama, as the female reader indicates she might do. Now I personally would not vote for a left-wing, black-liberation-theology Democrat in order to defeat McCain, but I can understand other people doing it. However, to do such an extreme thing, simply on the basis that McCain is married to a trophy wife while Obama is married to his first wife, is, I think, taking things rather far.

James W. writes:

The pundits claiming the base is shoring up for McCain actually may more clueless than the rest of us because they feel it is required of them to offer an opinion well before it can be known.

What comes to me is that McCain is truly a little man, and cannot check his hatred of conservatives long enough to put together a plausible deception we would volunteeer to swallow. And we would volunteer; and he hasn’t done it. Instead he is practically exploding with desire in reclaiming the Democrat party from moveon.org and governing as some uniparty candidate suitable to his delusions and affectations.

It is growing conceivable that a Marxist fool, emphasis fool, could cause less damage in four years than this pugnacious, curiously narrow man.

I’m probably going to sit this one out and vote down ticket.

LA replies:

“The pundits claiming the base is shoring up for McCain actually may more clueless than the rest of us…”

I presume the widely shared view today about the base holding for McCain is not a fiction but is based on the simple fact that McCain is maintaining support in the mid-40s neck and neck with Obama. So it’s a question to be asked: What happened to the legions of conservatives who loathe McCain and said they would never support him?

Adela G. writes:

I’ll admit that our apparent choice of either a Stepford wife or Aunt Esther as First Lady is dispiriting, to say the least. But I’d prefer a “trophy wife” to an “affirmative action wife” representing the United States any day.

The thought of a freeze-dried cheerleader as First Lady gives me no joy. But the mere thought of the grievance-mongering Michelle Obama as First Lady makes me shudder. I can just imagine her asking Queen Elizabeth if Prince Philip is as “stinky” and “snorey” as Barack is first thing in the morning.

LA replies:

“Freeze-dried cheerleader.” That’s a perfect description. It captures what I was trying to get at.

August 18

Adela G. replies:

I can’t take full credit for that description. It was your mention of Cindy (perfect cheer-leading name) as “spooky” that set me off.

LA replies:

Ironically, I later deleted the “spooky.” The original wording of my desciption of Mrs. McCain was: “a spooky, frozen version of a Stepford wife.” But then I thought, all Stepford wives are frozen and spooky, as well as being young and beautiful, but I was trying to convey the idea that Mrs. McCain does not look young and beautiful but oddly and unnaturally old. So I changed “spooky” to “pinched.”

The female reader replies to her critics:

My point may sound trivial, but if McCain is elected the message will go out that it’s ok to cheat on your wife to get something better, and also that it’s ok for women to make themselves available for adulterous relationships with men who are dissatisfied with their marriages. Obama has said more about the social issues surrounding marriage and family in the year that he’s been running, than McCain has said in his whole political career. McCain doesn’t even care about family issues (indeed he has explicitly stated, “It’s not social issues I care about”), and also he has said nothing about crime, which one of the responders seems to be referring to. What does that responder think McCain is going to do to prevent the decline of neighborhoods which are growing increasingly difficult for whites to live in? He wants to amnesty twenty million Hispanic illegal aliens and, if we resist, to make us feel like bad people who don’t recognize the humanity of others. He wants us to welcome the change that the Latinization of our culture is bringing and to see ourselves enriched by it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 17, 2008 06:59 PM | Send