Charles Krauthammer makes sense. His column answers Kathleen Parker and those of her ilk.
Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.
I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.
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Some self-proclaimed conservatives have stopped making sense. I don't know if they have just lost it or if they're trying to get attention. I don't know why they're doing it, but there's a definite pattern of deliberate subversion.
Kathleen Parker is an example.
She's like Tokyo Rose. She's like Jane Fonda.
In her column today, "The Reverse-Bradley Effect," Parker discusses the possibility that many Americans are liars. And of course, she rips John McCain and Sarah Palin in the process.
Parker writes:
[P]olls only reflect what people say they think, not what they really think.
Which is to say, we have both an election and a shadow election in progress. The latter, in which unconscious motivations come into play and buried prejudices surface in the privacy of one's voting space, is the one that counts -- and that can't be quantified in advance.
The 2008 election may prove to be history's highest stakes game of Liar's Dice.
Among the hidden factors is the so-called Bradley Effect, meaning that whites lie to pollsters about their support for a black candidate. It is cited as the reason Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost to George Deukmejian in the 1982 California governor's race, despite polls showing him up to seven points ahead.
But equally significant this time may become known as the Reverse-Bradley Effect: whites who would never admit to voting for a black man, but do. And, expanding the definition somewhat, Republicans and conservatives who would never admit to voting for a Democrat, especially one so liberal. Whether these dynamics are in balance won't be known for a while -- or perhaps ever. That's because the crux of the reverse syndrome is a code of omerta.
No one talks.
"No one talks"?
I think Parker needs to get out more.
What's with all this shadowy crap?
Who's playing these games?
Bradley Effect, Reverse Bradley Effect, BS!
Allow me to talk:
I'm voting for John McCain. I am going to vote for McCain on Nov. 4th. I will go to my polling place in two weeks and cast my vote for McCain. That's what I'm going to do. That's the truth. I'm voting for McCain.
If a pollster should ask me, I'd have no problem saying that I'm voting for McCain. I'm not voting for Barack Obama, not going to happen. I support McCain. I'm not afraid to admit that.
What sort of country is this anyway? What's with all these people supposedly afraid to tell the truth about where they stand?
I know I wouldn't lie about it.
While some have minimized the impact of a Bradley effect in this election, we'd be wrong to discount it. Anti-black has morphed to some degree into anti-foreigner and anti-Muslim.
"Palling around with terrorists," as Sarah Palin said of Obama, gets to an underlying xenophobic, anti-Muslim sentiment. Using surrogates who strategically use Obama's middle name, Hussein, feeds the same dark heart.
This tactic, denied but undeniable, has been effective with target audiences, some of whom can be viewed on YouTube entering a Palin rally in Pennsylvania. One cherubic older fellow totes a stuffed Curious George monkey wearing an Obama sticker as a hat.
"This is little Hussein," he says, holding the monkey up to the camera and cackling as he walks away.
To McCain's credit, he has tried to correct his audience -- when, for example, a woman said she couldn't trust Obama because he's an Arab. Gosh, wonder where she ever got that idea? But the McCain-Palin bad cop-good cop routine is what it is. The hot babe lathers the crowd; the noble soldier hoses them down. This isn't a campaign; it's a sideshow.
This ticks me off.
Are there loons out there? Yes.
Are they representative of McCain-Palin supporters? No.
I'm not voting for Obama because of the direction he wants to take the country. I'm against most of his positions on issues.
That's not anti-black, anti-foreigner, or anti-Muslim.
I'm anti-Obama for president. Nothing personal. No racism. No bigotry.
Parker's attacks on Sarah Palin are unwarranted. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn were proud to be waging war against America. They were proud to be terrorists. If Parker claims otherwise, she's being intellectually dishonest.
Obama's middle name is Hussein.
SO WHAT?
Are we a country of dark-hearted people?
Parker thinks so. I don't.
...Sitting quietly at their desks are an unknown number of discreet conservatives who surprise themselves as they mull their options. Appalled by McCain's erratic behavior, both in dealing with the financial crisis and his selection of an unsuitable running mate, they will quietly (and with considerable trepidation) vote for Obama.
Are they are worried about higher taxes, a premature withdrawal from Iraq, and Obama's inexperience in matters executive? You betcha. But they do not want to vote for a divisive, anti-intellectual ticket headed by a man who, though they admire him, lately has made them embarrassed to be Republicans.
What is she talking about?
Well, I know what she's talking about -- the Democrat talking points. I wonder why.
"Appalled by McCain's erratic behavior, both in dealing with the financial crisis and his selection of an unsuitable running mate, they will quietly (and with considerable trepidation) vote for Obama."
Parker has to be kidding.
I find McCain's behavior neither appalling nor erratic. I do find it appalling that a few conservatives are labeling McCain as erratic.
Moreover, I do not consider Sarah Palin to be an unsuitable running mate. She's not making a gaffe a minute, like Joe Biden. I'm sick of Palin being trashed.
It's impossible for a principled conservative to vote for the most liberal individual in the U.S. Senate, Obama.
Voting for Obama with "considerable trepidation" doesn't cut it.
...Should Obama win, it will be in part because some number of quiet, mostly white-collar men and women who speak Republican in public voted Democratic in private.
Whatever the final tally, Obama should not interpret his victory as a mandate. Many of the Reverse-Bradley ballots won't have been votes cast for Obama, but against a campaign turned ugly. They also will have been delivered with solemn prayers that Obama will govern as the centrist, pragmatic leader he is capable of being.
Perhaps Parker is familiar with people who talk Republican but walk Democrat.
I'm not one of those people.
I don't know any people who've tossed out the importance of voting on substance and will be casting their votes as a statement against McCain's "campaign turned ugly."
I think it's ugly for Obama to lie in his ads. I think his tactics to silence his critics are terrifying. I think his fundamental philosophy, that we should "spread the wealth around," is not what this country is about.
Parker concludes with her endorsement of Barack Obama. She doesn't say it outright, but it's clear.
I completely disagree with Parker's assertion that conservatives will vote for Obama with "solemn prayers that Obama will govern as the centrist, pragmatic leader he is capable of being."
Obama is not a centrist. Look at his record, flimsy as it is. There is nothing to suggest that Obama will govern as a centrist. NOTHING. He's an extremist. He's the most liberal individual in the Senate.
Whether or not Obama is capable of being a "centrist, pragmatic leader" is irrelevant.
What matters is Obama has no intention of governing as a centrist. He hasn't campaigned as one.
"Solemn prayers"?
I'm praying that Parker and those of her ilk come to their senses before Nov. 4th.
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