My column in the Madison County Journal this week discusses whether John McCain could be the second "crunchy-con" president. Here are some excerpts.
On the second day of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, delegates watched a video tribute to Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. From charging with the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, to hunting with Holt Collier in the Mississippi Delta, to his iconic graving onto Mount Rushmore, Roosevelt is one of America's more storied leaders. His biography speaks well to Republicans promoting John McCain and Sarah Palin: a war hero who fought against special interests; a former police commissioner who fired bad cops, he was elected governor before joining the Republican ticket as vice-president.
The Roosevelt video reminded me of conversations with Republican friends in canoes floating down rivers: fishing, swimming, and enjoying our country's natural resources. Roosevelt is considered by some the father of national park system because of his conservation vision. I consider him the first Crunchy Con President.
Dreher writes this thumbnail of the Crunchy Con Manifesto: "We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government. Culture is more important than politics and economics. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship - especially of the natural world - is not fundamentally conservative. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract. Beauty is more important than efficiency. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom. We share Russell Kirk's conviction that 'the institution most essential to conserve is the family.'"
McCain often references Theodore Roosevelt as his favorite President and carries his campaign and ideology with a similar maverick sentiment and environmental commitment. But, many Crunchy Cons see themselves more at home with someone like Ron Paul (for whatever reason) or in third parties like the Constitution Party.
McCain's similarities to Roosevelt are not merely symbolic. It will be interesting to see if those Republican delegates from Minnesota and counter-culture conservatives will unite to elect a second Crunchy Con president.
Luke Fowler wrote in Sunday's Clarion Ledger about Senator John McCain's family connections to Mississippi. Here are some excerpts.
Mother's Side:
His mother's side of the family first settled in northeast Mississippi in the late 18th century. Sometime around the year 1800, James Howard (Sen. McCain's maternal great-great-great-great grandfather) moved from South Carolina to Pontotoc County.
In 1851, Nancy Adeline Atkins (Sen. McCain's great grandmother) was born; she remained in Alcorn County her entire life, starting a family with her husband, Franklin Alexander Wright of Muscle Shoals, Ala. In 1875, Nancy Wright gave birth to Archibald (Sen. McCain's maternal grandfather) in the village of Kossuth.
Archibald was the first member of Sen. McCain's maternal family to leave Mississippi. In about 1900, Archibald made his way to Indian Territory near present day Oklahoma where he made a fortune in oil. While in Muskogee, Okla., Archibald's wife gave birth to twins in 1912, one of whom was Roberta (Sen. McCain's mother). Roberta later married John Sidney McCain Jr., the senator's future father who also had strong ties to Mississippi.
Father's Side:
On his father's side, the first generation of McCain's family to move to Mississippi arrived in the mid 1800s. Mary Scales of Rockingham County, N.C., married Joseph McCain of Scotland in 1807 (Sen. McCain's great-great-great grandparents). After 33 years of marriage, Joseph died in 1840; Mary moved with her children to Tallahatchie County.
Her son, William Alexander McCain (Sen. McCain's great-great grandfather), died fighting for the Confederate States of America in the 5th regiment of the Mississippi Cavalry in the Civil War in 1863.
In 1851, the first John Sidney McCain (Sen. McCain's great grandfather), known as J.S., was born on Teoc. He served as sheriff of Carroll County and later as president of the county's board of supervisors.
John Sidney McCain's brother, Henry Pickney McCain (Sen. McCain's great-great uncle), attended the U.S. Military Academy, retiring as a major general in the U. S. Army. Major General McCain is actually the "McCain" for whom Camp McCain, the Mississippi National Guard training site in Grenada County is named.
In 1884, in rural Carroll County, John Sidney McCain Sr. (Sen. McCain's grandfather) was born. McCain Sr., the first McCain to leave Mississippi, attended the University of Mississippi before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Camp McCain:
Camp McCain is a Mississippi National Guard training site. Covering more than 13,000 acres in Grenada County, it was named in honor of the "fighting" McCains of Carroll County, and principally Major Gen. Henry P. McCain. Opening in 1942 as a 42,000-acre site, the 87th and 94th Army Divisions trained there before being sent to combat in Europe. At its peak, Camp McCain trained as many as 50,000 men simultaneously.
In addition to training, Camp McCain served as a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers during World War II, one of four in Mississippi. At the height of its POW camp status, it held more than 7,500 German prisoners and administered the POW camp in addition to its training function.
After being deactivated in 1947, Camp McCain has found new life in the 1960s as an Army National Guard training site. By the 1970s, facilities for the housing of 1,200 troops were completed.
In 1984, an additional 4,500 acres were added to the existing perimeter, a road network was expanded and improved; in the late 1980s, 10 modern weapons ranges were constructed.
Camp McCain is not what Mississippians think about when they consider significant military installations in the state. But the state benefits significantly from appropriations directed specifically for the improvement of Camp McCain - more than $10 million in the 21st century alone.
You can make volunteer phone calls on behalf of the McCain-Palin Campaign from your own home. Reaching out to undecided voters is vital to spreading the word that John McCain and Governor Palin are the right choice for voters all across America. That's why the campaign is asking you to take a few minutes or even a free evening to make calls for John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. Visit www.JohnMcCain.com/PhoneBank to get started today.
For those who are ready, willing and able to pack a suitcase and hit the road for voter turnout in a target state, Volunteer Deployment is for you. The McCain-Palin Campaign is recruiting McCain Marshals and McCain Mavericks to deploy to states all over the country to assist existing McCain-Palin 2008 operations in their final days/weeks of voter contact.
Who should apply?
McCain Marshals
This program is for those who are comfortable working independently, managing a local office and recruiting new volunteers. Additionally, our McCain Marshals must be familiar with the new political technologies we are using in the field. Ideally, they will have campaign experience, or have participated in Deployment in recent years and be familiar with our turnout operations. The requirements are a minimum two-week commitment (October 22nd through November 5th).
McCain Mavericks
This program is for all of you that are able to give the last week or two before Election Day to make turnout phone calls and go door-to-door in one of our top battleground states. You'll work all day (and night) long with a group of friends (some new, some old) to turn out voters on Election Day. The departure day is anytime before November 1st, and you'll be able to return home on Wednesday, November 5.
A poll conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal web site DailyKos has the McCain-Palin ticket thumping the Obama-Biden ticket in Mississippi. Likewise it has Roger Wicker beating Ronnie Musgrove.
I've been in St. Paul at the Republican National Convention this week and filed my column on how John McCain changed the convention as Gustav approached Mississippi and Louisiana. Here are some excerpts.
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Sen. John McCain chose "Country First" as the theme for the Republican National Convention. As Hurricane Gustav crept toward the Gulf Coast, disrupting commemoration activities of the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, McCain showed his theme was more than just words.
As the convention opened, the invocation asked for God's protection for the people on the Gulf Coast. The opening address, by Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, urged convention goers and those watching to pull out their cell phones and text the word "GIVE" to 24357 to donate $5 to the American Red Cross through a partnership with the Wireless Foundation.
Meanwhile an army of convention workers handed out printed cards that had the McCain "Country First" logo on one side and on the flip side a web address and phone number for relief and recovery agencies in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Delegates planned to assemble "country first" packages with emergency supplies to be sent to Americans needing basic necessities.
Later in the evening, Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush addressed the convention and urged folks to visit www.causegreater.com to find ways to help those affected by Hurricane Gustav. The "cause greater" plays off a McCain campaign theme that Americans should seek to serve a cause greater than ourselves. McCain has written, "Love of country is another way of saying love of your fellow countrymen - a truth I learned a long time ago in a country very different from ours. Patriotism is another way of saying service to a cause greater than self-interest. "
Changing his vice-president announcement campaign swing through battle-ground states, McCain and Palin instead accepted an invitation by Gov. Barbour to attend a briefing at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Rankin County. McCain saw a state ready and prepared and spoke of reforms needed in the federal response.
It reminded me of a column U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering wrote for ABC News in February 2007 when he endorsed McCain during the Republican Primary. Pickering wrote, "McCain is a reformer. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the federal emergency response frustrated Mississippians. From debris removal contracts, to reimbursing our local towns and counties and providing the funding necessary to recover, federal bureaucracies were slow and often more concerned with procedure than people; more focused on corporate storm chasers than rebuilding our schools and hospitals and even bridges and roads. We need a leader in the White House who will fight the bureaucracies, take on the status quo and demand results and reforms. Americans know McCain is ready for that fight and won't back down despite entrenched interests who benefit from the current, broken system."
After the Iraq intelligence failures, early mission execution failures in Iraq, and the government's failed response to Hurricane Katrina, voters want a competent adult in the White House. This week McCain demonstrated he possesses the will to make big decisions of a serious nature. McCain might not have the iconic presence to be celebrity in chief, but he has experience and judgment to be commander in chief.
Conventions are fun partisan parties, but when it somes to serious business, McCain puts country first. ClarionLedger.com is reporting: McCain, Palin briefed on Gustav preparations
The GOP’s likely presidential nominee John McCain and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spent just shy of two hours in Rankin County today.
Gov. Haley Barbour invited McCain, McCain’s wife, Cindy, and Palin to tour Mississippi Emergency Management’s Emergency Operations Center. The three were briefed on the preparations for Hurricane Gustav.
At the EOC, the group participated in a conference call with the National Weather Service and President Bush.
During a press conference after the briefing, McCain said some of the programs for the Republican National Convention would be changed because of the approaching storm.
The Republican Party plans to announce the schedule changes this afternoon.
Senator John McCain has chosen Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. She has a track record of challenging the establishment and bringing reform to government. A young mother of five, she is a former mayor and a supporter of expanded domestic drilling for our energy security.
There have been stories and columns sharing connections of Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) to Mississippi. Now that he has been selected to run for Vice-President on the Democratic ticket, it is a good time to revisit his role in the confirmation battles over Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering. My column this week in the Neshoba Democrat discusses Biden's role as recounted in Pickering's two books. Here are some excerpts of the column:
Pickering needed a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote to send his nomination (with a positive, neutral, or even negative recommendation) to the full Senate. Later, Pickering needed Democrats to stand against unprecedented filibusters, even if they ultimately voted against him. Both times, Biden made overtures he would help Pickering; both times, Biden folded under political pressure.
A number of Mississippians were close to Biden, his staff, and his brother Jim. Former Governor William Winter and other supporters planned a trip to visit Biden in Washington DC to discuss the Pickering nomination. Biden sent word the trip was unnecessary. Pickering thought this a positive development, until the next shoe dropped: the Democratic offer of an unacceptable deal.
Judge Pickering's son, Congressman Chip Pickering, was in a redistricting fight which combined his district with that of Congressman Ronnie Shows. How the district was drawn would determine advantage in the election between the incumbents. Word came that Biden's vote could come more easily, if Chip would not oppose the Democrats' redistricting plan, and would guarantee Pickering's replacement on the federal district bench would be black.
Judge Pickering scoffed at the deal, "We quit child sacrifice a long time ago." He wrote, "There was no consideration of Chip caving on redistricting. There was no opposition to an African American as my replacement. I believe the Mississippi federal bench needs more diversity....There was a willingness for this to happen, but unwillingness to do a 'quid pro quo'."
Publically and privately, Biden did not believe Pickering a bad nomination. He rejected racial criticisms of Pickering as well as denying accusations of inequitable sentencing. In private, he told supporters he thought Pickering a good judge who deserved a vote. Biden even approached Senator Trent Lott and told him while he could not vote to confirm Pickering, he would vote to end a filibuster. Biden later confirmed this with the press.
When Republicans regained control of the Senate, Bush re-nominated Pickering, and his nomination went to the full Senate. Biden crawfished again.
Biden bent to political pressure rather than doing what he thought was right. He chose party over principle. In the grand scheme, Pickering's nomination was a minor battle. But in the character of Joe Biden, we see a failure to exhibit the courage necessary to honor a commitment to do the right thing.
There are a lot of Democrats in Denver who believe it is more important to have a good president than it is to have a Democratic President. We put America first; party second. And so there is an organization, Party Unity My Ass.In this time of global uncertainity, we need someone with experience and competence. I am voting for McCain. Other Democrats, might not vote rather than vote for someone with little experience into the most important elected job in the country.
Consider what Ann Price Mills has to say.
"I was elected to come here as a delegate for Clinton. I will vote for Clinton. But you ask me about my personal vote in November? Obama has two months. I won't for McCain. But he has to get me there. Experience speaks to me. I ask people all the time. Would you take someone straight out of Harvard, even if they had the education, and put them as the CEO of the company?...But for the first time since I was 18, I may be faced with something I don't want to have to deal with. I have never not voted...but for the first time...Experience counts, I don't care what anybody tells you. And his resume is just (sigh)." - Ann Price Mills, Clinton Delegate to the DNC
Bill Clinton appeared to undermine Sen. Barack Obama again Tuesday.
The former president, speaking in Denver, posed a hypothetical question in which he seemed to suggest that that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in choosing Obama as its presidential nominee.
He said: "Suppose for example you're a voter. And you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?"
Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: "This has nothing to do with what's going on now."
The comments are unlikely to be taken as an innocent mistake by those Democrats who continue to be angry with the former president for, they say, not supporting the Illinois senator wholeheartedly, if not implicitly undercutting him.
The controversial comments came just hours before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the former first lady and principal rival to Obama, was due to speak from the convention podium.
West Virginia's registered Democrats, like their cousins in western Pennsylvania and eastern and southern Ohio, are having a hard time fitting anywhere within Barack Obama's vision of the Democratic party. "Obama and his message just do not gel with me," said Mark Lamp as he climbed into his utility truck. Lamp, 47, from neighboring Weirton, is a registered Democrat who voted for Clinton in the May primary. "My first problem with him is taxes, the second is experience," he explained.
"I vote leadership. That is why I voted for Hillary and why I will vote McCain."
Once thought to be a battleground state, all indications are that West Virginia is off Obama's campaign map. Turn on the television today and you won't find any Obama ads running, and he has no trips to the state planned in the immediate future. (Sources within the campaign say they are keeping their eye on the state.)
West Virginia is still home to the Jacksonian Democrats, those descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants who vote God, country, and guns, and have a stronger than average distrust of government. They are white, lower middle-class union members who work hard, play by the rules, have faith in God and a hefty dose of patriotism.
But from the southern coalfields to the northern panhandle (which is really southwestern Pennsylvania, and Catholic Democrat country) you are entering the land that the national Democratic party forgot.
