So I was on the Laura Ingraham Radio Program this morning.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve called two national radio shows in my life \u2013 the Laura Ingraham Show and the Michael Medved Show. Both times, I got through on my first try, and I was on the air within minutes. This morning, I was on the air about 30 seconds after my call. What\u2019s that about? (The screener was insistent that I not wish Laura a \u201cgood morning,\u201d presumably because the show is rebroadcast in the afternoon, and they want people to still think it\u2019s on live. Suckers.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, some guy had just gone on about why he was a Republican supporting Obama. He was less than convincing, but Laura asked if there were any other \u201cObamacans\u201d out there. I realized, when she said that, that I was a budding Obamacan, but for reasons wholly unrelated to what the guy before had said. So, on a whim, I called when she gave out the number, and thirty seconds later, I was on the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go to Jim in Salt Lake City,\u201d she said. \u201cJim, are you an Obamacan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning!\u201d I said back. \u201cLovely morning, isn\u2019t it? The sun is shining bright, the birds are chirping\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Oops. I didn\u2019t say that. But wouldn\u2019t it be cool if I had? No, what I said was \u201cnot really,\u201d but that McCain freaked me out. I cited the 1964 presidential election, where Goldwater opponents played off the Goldwater slogan \u201cIn your heart, you know he\u2019s right\u201d with the counterslogan \u201cIn your gut, you know he\u2019s nuts.\u201d I said that in my gut, McCain scares the crap out of me. (I wonder if it\u2019s a problem that I said \u201ccrap\u201d on national radio.) I told her I was pretty much a Republican party hack, but Obama, in my gut, doesn\u2019t scare me because he\u2019s a decent human being. She didn\u2019t really push back on that, and then she hung up on me as I continued talking. I didn\u2019t realize it until I asked a question, and she didn\u2019t answer back. Who\u2019s the sucker now?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if the GOP realizes how terrified they ought to be that I, who have worked for Republicans in Washington and in Utah, who is about as blinkered a partisan as they come, who teaches my young children to boo whenever Hillary Clinton\u2019s name is mentioned, am considering voting for a Democrat for president. I knew, back in 2006, that the Republicans were doomed when I stopped caring about the election results. If I, Mr. Hack, had stopped caring, then what about the normal people who don\u2019t have National Review Online and Lucianne.com bookmarked and constantly refreshed throughout the day? If the Republicans lose me, they\u2019ve pretty much lost everybody.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard it said that ordinary people vote from the gut, but I\u2019ve never had that experience. I wasn\u2019t thrilled about George Bush I or Bob Dole, but I dutifully cast my ballot for them. I was more excited about George W., but the vote required no \u201cgut check\u201d on my part. We have a reasonable and decent Democrat as our congressman, but I\u2019ve consistently voted for his Republican opponent out of party loyalty, and the fact that in the House of Representatives, it\u2019s numbers that matter, not people.<\/p>\n
But this time, I\u2019m getting gut signals that I\u2019m having a hard time ignoring. In my gut, I know McCain is nuts. And Barack ought to scare me \u2013 his proposals are loony, he\u2019ll appoint Lefties to the courts \u2013 but he doesn\u2019t scare me as much as McCain does. In fact, he doesn\u2019t scare me at all, which sort of scares me. (Hillary, by the way, scares the bejeebers out of me. She\u2019s history, though.)<\/p>\n
People cite Barack’s vapid slogans and his lack of experience in order to induce a gut reaction, but it doesn\u2019t work on me. I\u2019m not transfixed by his speeches, but they\u2019re no emptier than the sloganeering of candidates from either party. Plus, they\u2019re primarily positive, unlike Hillary\u2019s banshee laments. And ironically, his lack of experience is somehow reassuring. It means that in the office, he\u2019ll have room to learn and grow, to question some of his liberal assumptions, and that maybe, just maybe, he’ll end up surprising us by doing the right thing.<\/p>\n
This is not a persuasive intellectual argument. There is no indication that Obama is a closet conservative and every indication that he is not. But my gut says he\u2019s probably the best choice in November. And this time, there\u2019s no persuasive argument to counter the gut check – there are plenty of reasons why McCain would be a disaster.<\/p>\n
Maybe the problem is that I have a more sizeable gut than I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoI was on the Laura Ingraham Radio Program this morning. I\u2019ve called two national radio shows in my life \u2013 the Laura Ingraham Show and the Michael Medved Show. Both times, I got through on my first try, and I was on the air within minutes. This morning, I was on the air about 30 ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}