Dear Democrats,
Can you feel it? Are you starting to get a little antsy? Nervous? Perhaps even a little worried? You must never have thought this election would have been anything but a cakewalk. The real election was supposed to be your Democratic convention in Denver. You nominate Hillary, you win. You nominate Barack, you win bigger. Unfortunately, those crafty conservatives had other plans. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that scraggly, sometimes grumpy, often peeved 71-year-old man, is the one man in America who will beat both of your candidates, and everyone knows it.
This is why I am a Republican: Because, for all of our faults and our failings, our party runs well and yours doesn't. Remember 2004? That election was yours to lose and, big surprise, John Kerry lost it. Look at what's happening now. Hillary and Barack are both massively popular. Barack especially seems to have that certain something, that charisma and smooth baritone that most politicians can only dream about. Yet, instead of taking the ball and running with it, you booted it, fumbled it and stumbled all over the place. Now you have Hillary and Bill attempting to bash poor Barack into the ground over some plagiarized lines in his speech and poor Barack trying, in vain, to give it right back. Just picture the whole enterprise as one big sinking ship.
Yet the Republicans truck along. Who would have ever thought that Mitt Romney, the big-haired man from Massachusetts, would have an honorable streak? I didn't see it coming. As a McCain fan myself, I thought Romney was akin to the anti-Christ. He was a panderer and a flip-flopper, a weasel who couldn't be trusted. Yet this "weasel" had the fortitude and sense of history to understand that his campaign was destroying the Republican Party and their chances for retaining the presidency. Not only did he end his campaign, he threw his endorsement and his delegates to McCain, his political (and personal) enemy. Now the dominoes are beginning to fall and the Republicans are beginning to dutifully line up behind their one shot at keeping the Democrats and universal health care out of the White House.
We now see who runs the Republican Party, and, surprising to many, it isn't the conservative pundits who made a mockery of themselves as they tried to derail McCain's campaign. We now see those who understand that compromise, even with the most liberal of Democrats, as part of the political process. We now see that it is the moderates of America who have made and will continue to make the Republican party great and powerful.
And now your fear is showing. You can smell it, seeping out of The New York Times' front page and from the pages of this very paper. The maverick, the hero who withstood years of torture in a Saigon prison, will be the nominee, and you just don't know what to do. You keep trying to paint him as a sellout; you keep trying to strip him of his rightfully earned title of "maverick." You try to smear him with half-cooked allegations of infidelity. It isn't working, and it won't ever work. Unfortunately for you, it takes more than a few angry editorials in the Times to dethrone a national icon.
So by all means, let Hillary and Obama keep smashing away at one another. Let the celebrities line up behind whom they will. Last time I checked, Obama had picked up Oprah and the Ben & Jerry's guys; Hillary's got Martha Stewart and 50 Cent. McCain doesn't need star power. He just needs a microphone and an open mind. Pity the Democrat who has to run against him.
Love, Your Resident Conservative Pundit
Charlie Szold is a freshman in the School of Public Affairs and a conservative columnist for The Eagle.
