Open Letter to Sen. McCain from a Conservative Voter

Dear Senator McCain:

Congratulations on your resurrection! Easter came early for you this year; this time a year ago, the pundits had pronounced your campaign "dead and buried." However, you have doggedly, and with singleness of purpose pursued the nomination of our party and it looks as if you will achieve this goal.

I cast my first vote in a presidential election for our beloved Ronald Reagan in 1980, and I have never looked back; since that time I have supported conservative candidates in the Presidential primaries, and, ultimately, the nominee of our party in the general election.

For the most part, this has not been too difficult of a decision for me, except for when we nominated Bob Dole in 1996; we could have done better as a party, in terms of putting up a better candidate against Bill Clinton.

Ironically, this time around we may be facing Mr. Clinton's wife. What concerns me in this election is that there may not be much of a difference between a McCain Administration and a Clinton Administration.

I cannot, of course, speak for all conservatives. But many of us do feel that once you are done "campaigning from the Right," you will ultimately "govern from the left." Your "maverick" label is one you wear proudly; it comes from bucking the Republican establishment, not the Washington establishment.

So what, exactly, is the conservatives' beef with a McCain Administration? There is plenty that we are concerned about.

The Gang of 141 immediately comes to mind.

I see you "reaching across the aisle" and nominating judges that will be in the mold of centrist-to-left such as Justices Breyer, Souter, and Kennedy should anymore vacancies open up on the Supreme Court during your time in office.

I am concerned that you feel the Bush tax cuts were for the "wealthiest Americans;" I am hardly wealthy, yet you would take this away and make my family's tax burden onerous. A President McCain would use the same class warfare rhetoric as his "friends" in the Democrat party.

There isn't much difference in your views on global warming theory and Al Gore's position; you would enact a $.50 gas tax which would, again, be an onerous burden on my family.

Your opposition to drilling in Anwar, again, makes you Al Gore's doppelganger in the eyes of many conservatives. How can we defeat Islamofacism if we keep financing it via the gas pump?

McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and McCain-Lieberman are perfect examples of how a President McCain would "reach across the aisle," to ensure that his legacy would show that "Washington works," and "things got done" during what would (hopefully be) your short time in office.

In closing, the Republican Party wins elections when Republicans run, as well as govern, from staunchly conservative principles. Those of us who proudly claim our pedigree from Ronald Reagan on all of the issues he stood for, not just a handful (like you do, e.g. restricting freedom of speech through the farce known as "campaign finance reform), will have a difficult time this November turning out for you. We know that should you defeat the Democrat nominee in November, you will forget your entreaties to conservatives and make a left turn for the sake of John McCain, not for the sake of the United States.

Is it any wonder people are turned off by politics?

Is McCain a Conservative?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013003212_pf.html

1 The Gang of 14 was a term coined to describe the bipartisan group of moderate Senators in the 109th United States Congress who successfully negotiated a compromise in the spring of 2005 to avoid the deployment of the so-called nuclear option (or constitutional option) over an organized use of the filibuster by Senate Democrats to prevent the confirmation of conservative appellate court candidates nominated by President George W. Bush. It consisted of 7 Republicans and 7 Democrats led by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) and John McCain (R-Arizona) (from Wikipedia)