If John McCain picks a pro-choice running mate, I don’t know what I will do.
He will have thrown away his one great advantage in making many of us feel comfortable with voting for him.
There is a rumor that he is calling around asking what grass roots Republicans will do if he makes this move. Here is the result of my survey of a family of Republican voters. We are not new to the party. My Dad and I were looking at his Dwight Eisenhower comic books (a great campaign idea!) on Sunday. My ancestors joined the Republican Party when Lincoln vowed to save the Union and free the enslaved. From seventeen to seventy the response to the a pro-choice veep from this group was:
“You have to be kidding.”
If McCain throws us under the straight-talk express, then we vote . . . California has an important ballot proposition, but we have no idea what we will do when we vote for President. In the past, faced with two bad choices, something that has not happened in my lifetime, my Dad just skipped the Presidential line. On Saturday after Saddleback, we all liked (and Dad loved) John McCain, but such a choice, the first of his administration, would destroy our trust in McCain.
If we don’t know who we would vote for, then that cannot be good.
I assume this is an ugly campaign rumor, but if not it is the stupidest trial balloon of the campaign.
Please don’t do it Senator McCain.