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1. There are two candidates vying for a position.
2. One is horrifying, one is awful.
3. Your decision to vote for neither of them makes each of them equal.
I am not in the mood to hear bitching from 3rd party voters. Can you tell? I hope Obama hits 3rd party voters hardest and leaves the unborn alone.
Some of these nattering nabobs may be looking for a GOP presidential candidate to throw in with in 2012. They had better hope that candidate isn’t a certain Alaskan governor.
Conservatives like me actually thought Palin was the best person on the ticket. By throwing her under the bus, McCain staffers have essentially thrown themselves under the bus.
Go join Operation Leper at redstate.com.
I echo the sentiments of some that is incredible for the country that we are able to elect a black President so recently after a period of slavery, but I also echo the sentiments that I am unable to get caught up in the hype. We enter a time in our country when there are more questions than answers, and many of those questions are ones that could have been asked before this election and weren’t. I don’t like the prospects for correcting a poor court decision in Roe vs. Wade for at least 50 years from this coming January, and it is only when we go back to choosing life that our country will prosper again. I don’t like that we just elected the most unqualified president in our nation’s history, either. It is not John McCain’s fault, and it’s not Sarah Palin’s fault. The best thing that came out of this unwinnable election was that we have a new conservative leader and a new pro-life leader in Sarah Palin. The honorable campaign McCain ran and is introduction of Sarah Palin to America were two great services by a great man. The blame falls squarely on four groups of people:
1. The Republican Base that took a chance on Obama by not showing up to vote today.
2. The blind-trust liberals, who mistook this election as The American Idol.
3. The conservatives who should have voted for McCain to prevent Obama, and instead voted 3rd party.
4. The mainstream media. Fortunately for us, it was their last hurrah, their last solid influence on American politics. They failed us to an infinite degree, and in the process they have exposed themselves.
Get some rest while you can. We have four sleepless years ahead of us.
When all of the campaigning is said and done, we are left with a clear choice: a true, American hero who brings a lifetime of experience and clearly patriotic intentions to the White House, or one who has has said one thing, done another, and that is all we seem to know about him.
If you are a liberal, your clear choice is to vote for Barack Obama. He’s a dream come true for liberals. I concede that.
If you are a conservative, your clear choice is to vote for John McCain. Even those of you whose principles don’t make it easy — I’m among them — the risk is far too great to actually fill in another circle or push another button when you enter the voting booth. Please maintain your principles, keep your vote for McCain to yourself, and keep working for the party to return to it’s conservative agenda. Your vote is too important to throw away on a third party candidate. The risk is too great to do one little thing to give an edge to Obama. Take a step for moderation when you enter the polls (none of us will be any the wiser) and maintain your conservative agenda (I’m with you).
Moderates, there is only one choice for you here: John McCain. Obama is the most liberal candidate of many of our lifetimes and, to make matters worse, he has Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid drooling over what to do with your money, drooling over cutting our defense budget and weakening us worldwide, and drooling over greater regulations that will hurt jobs and cause higher prices for consumers (worse than any tax increase — we can’t help but buy gas and milk). McCain *is* a moderate, as evidenced by ultra-conservatives problem with him.
Most of all, though, if you are holding a six shooter with one bullet in it, you’d be a fool to pull the trigger. You simply don’t know the ramifications of what Obama brings to our nation. He’s still a mystery, and one that at the very least needs four more years of vetting. Give the country four more years to make up their mind on Obama, and keep our country safe from terrorists, from a weaker economy, from a smaller job force, and from a country of no moral standing. Vote for John McCain.
Mary, mother of God and Queen of Victory, watch over our nation as we head to the polls tomorrow. Lord, keep all of us safe in our travels, and may the Holy Spirit inspire us to do Your holy will. Help us all to accept the results as part of your perfect plan. Most of all, convert all of us to do more to help the unborn, the sick, and the elderly. Let us keep the first commandment in mind and worship you as our God, and to treat politics as a means of doing Your will, not as another religion. Help us to keep Your second commandment, and make our vote in the interests of those who cannot vote for themselves. Amen.
Solemn Novena to Our Lady of Victory Lord, have mercy on us, Christ, have mercy on us, Christ, hear us, Christ, graciously hear us. God, the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us. God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Spirit, Have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us. The response for the following greetings is Pray for us. Our Lady of Victory, Victorious daughter of the Father, Victorious Mother of the Son, Victorious Spouse of the Holy Spirit, Victorious servant of the Holy Trinity Victorious in your Immaculate Conception, Victorious in crushing the serpent’s head, Victorious over all the children of Adam, Victorious over all enemies, Victorious in your response to the Angel Gabriel, Victorious in your wedding to St. Joseph, Victorious in the birth of Christ, Victorious in the flight to Egypt, Victorious in your exile, Victorious in your home at Nazareth, Victorious in finding Christ in the temple, Victorious in the mission of your Son, Victorious in His passion and death, Victorious in His Resurrection and Ascension, Victorious in the Coming of the Holy Spirit, Victorious in your sorrows and joys, Victorious in your glorious Assumption, Victorious in the angels who remained faithful, Victorious in the happiness of the saints, Victorious in the message of the prophets, Victorious in the testimony of the patriarchs, Victorious in the zeal of the apostles, Victorious in the witness of the evangelists, Victorious in the wisdom of the doctors, Victorious in the deeds of the confessors, Victorious in the triumph of all holy women, Victorious in the faithfulness of the martyrs, Victorious in your powerful intercession, Victorious under your many titles, Victorious at the moment of death, Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Spare us, Lord. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Hear us, Lord. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, Have mercy, Lord. Pray for us, blessed Lady of Victory. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let us pray: Our Lady of Victory, we have unshaken confidence in your influence with your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Humbly we ask your intercession for all of us associated under your title, Our Lady of Victory. We beg your powerful assistance also for our own personal needs. (Please mention here your special intention in you own words.) In your maternal kindness please ask Jesus to forgive all our sins and failings, and to secure His blessings for us and for all the works of charity dedicated to your name. We implore you to obtain for us the grace of sharing Christ’s victory and yours forever in the life that knows no ending. May we join you there to praise forever the Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, on God, for all the ages to come. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, You told us to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. Enlighten the minds of our people [in] America. May we choose a President of the United States, and other government officials, according to Your Divine Will. Give our citizens the courage to choose leaders of our nation who respect the sanctity of unborn human life, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of marital relations, the sanctity of the family, and the sanctity of the aging. Grant us the wisdom to give You, what belongs to You, our God. If we do this, as a nation, we are confident You will give us an abundance of Your blessings through our elected leaders. Amen.
A couple days ago I bemoaned the Douglas Kmiec article insinuating that Obama wasn’t, in fact, pro-choice and that he created an opening for pro-life Catholics to vote for him by throwing out the cliche about promoting adoption and sex ed as a remedy for all of the unplanned abortions (nevermind the 30-somethings that are having them at an alarming rate). In any case, I should have just held on for a couple days: I should have known George Weigel would quickly come out with something far superior.
In short, there is very little, if anything, in Senator Obama’s public record to suggest that he agrees with Professors Cafardi, Kaveny, and Kmiec that abortion is a “tragic moral choice.” On the contrary, the 2008 Democratic platform removed language that described abortion as “regrettable” from the relevant plank. Do Professors Cafardi, Kaveny, and Kmiec imagine that they have a better grasp of Senator Obama’s views on the life issues than, say, the National Reproductive Rights Action League [NARAL], or other pro-choice Obama supporters?
Weigel goes on to concede that McCain, while not perfect, is clearly the preferable of the two choices.
Is John McCain—for whom, I might add, I have never served as an adviser, formally or informally—a perfect pro-life candidate? Of course not. But Barack Obama is a perfect pro-life nightmare. President McCain would not work to repeal the pro-life legislative advances of the past 35 years; knowledgeable and sober-minded Catholic legal and political observers who have worked on these issues for decades are convinced that an Obama administration and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress would eviscerate those modest advances within a year. As for the Supreme Court, the hard facts of our national history teach us that, while the country can survive the court’s getting it wrong on some things, we are in very deep trouble when the court gets it wrong on the big human rights questions.
[Emphasis mine.]
Quite simply, I couldn’t have stated it any better. If you are pro-life and have even dreamt of voting for Obama, prayerfully consider George Weigel’s words.
Interestingly, CBS news points out that Palin has been the most accessible of the four top presidential ticket candidates recently:
In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.
By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23.
Considering Biden doesn’t think Obama is qualified to be our next president, one can understand why he isn’t taking questions. He, too, is worried about Obama’s inexperience in the case of an international crisis.
Douglas Kmiec tries, today in the L.A. Post, to fleece pro-life voters by saying that because Obama hinted in the last debate that abortion should be used as a last resort that all of a sudden, because of that, he is no longer “pro-choice” and that Christian (he says Catholic) can vote for him in good conscience.
So can Catholics vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is yes, but as I found when I publicly endorsed Obama, you’ve then got “some ’splain’n’ to do.” It’s a matter of conscience, but had Obama proclaimed himself to be pro-choice and said nothing more, it would have been problematic. But there are those additional words about appropriate education as well as adoption and assistance for mothers who choose to keep their baby.
Um, excuse me, but we aren’t stupid. Obama never, either, denounced abortion as something that is evil and is always wrong. He even said “we are going to disagree” when McCain had already spoken to the fact that abortion is wrong, and surely he didn’t expect that McCain disagreed with the assertion that we should do all we morally can to eliminate unwanted pregnancies (as in education, adoption, etc.). Clearly his point about disagreeing had to do with the fact that he thinks it is a mother’s choice to kill her child while McCain does not.
Some might ask, isn’t John McCain, the self-proclaimed “pro-lifer,” still a morally superior choice for Catholics? Not necessarily. McCain’s commitment, as he stressed in the debate, is to try to reverse Roe vs. Wade. But Republicans have been after this for decades, and the effort has not saved a single child. Even if Roe were reversed — unlikely, in my judgment — it merely transfers the question to the states, most of which are not expected to ban abortion. A Catholic serious about preserving life could reasonably find Obama’s educational and material assistance to mothers the practical, stronger alternative.
The fact of the matter is that regardless of what money is spent on anyone, and as it turns out McCain is much more charitable when it comes to these issues, the act of killing an innocent life is what is wrong. We can debate until our faces are blue about how best to support those who are going to carry out unwanted pregnancies as well as how we should go about preventing them, but that is totally immaterial in the argument of whether abortion is right or wrong and who you can vote on if you are rightly aimed and that is your strongest conviction. That part of the debate is not a moral issue on the same playing field as life and death. And, in case you didn’t notice, sir, the voter is completely at the mercy of the Supreme Court on this issue, one that should be decided by legislation from *elected* officials. Yes, we would have many more battles to come, us pro-lifers, after the decision was overturned. Many states would be legislating to legalize abortion immediately. However, at least our elected officials are accountable to us. Our SCOTUS justices are not. That should scare pro-lifers as well as the pro-death contingent (because how do you know what issue will be held hostage next?).
Catholics know how to pick presidents. In the last nine presidential contests, Catholics have been with the popular vote-getter every time. Where are the Catholics lining up in 2008? A recent Zogby poll has the national Catholic vote as a dead heat within the margin of error. If Catholic past is prologue, this election will be far closer than general polling suggests, and Obama’s few additional words in the final debate may prove to be his political salvation.
Obama’s words did nothing for any of us pro-lifers, and Mr. Kmiec’s words are even more outrageous. We aren’t stupid, and we will be turning out on November 4th to vote for John McCain.
McCain had his best night of the campaign tonight. I sincerely hope it wasn’t too little too late, though I’m fearing that this thing is over. Still, McCain put B.O. on the defensive all night long, pointing out his far-left liberalism including his plan to raise taxes, his blatant disregard for human blood, his socialist health care ideas, and his shady ties and frightening lies that have become the theme of the B.O. campaign.
A lot of people brighter than me will have articles tomorrow on either side. Tonight, however, it was clear that John McCain was (finally) the winner. Let’s hope this kicks off one more comeback for the comeback kid.
The guys over at Powerlineblog.com point out that McCain and others were prophetic in questioning who would be on the hook if government didn’t regulate housing loans and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed. Check out the letter that McCain has his name on…
It’s either McCain or Obama, and of the two McCain is clearly the person we need leading our country for the next four years.
