Even if John McCain is too old, decrepit, and soulless to listen, the message is loud and clear.
Dear John:
I supported you in 2000, when you at least appeared to be an honest man. But you have betrayed both your honor and my trust, and I find that I can no longer consort with you.
Earlier in the campaign, you boldly stated that you would not take the low road to the highest office in the land, but if there is a lower road than you have been taking in recent weeks, I am not aware of it. I care not one whit about Tony Rezko, given your much closer association with Charles Keating. What I care about are actual issues, and you have heretofore avoided them.
While you complain that your opponent is consorting with disreputable men, you have done so yourself. George W. (for War Crimes) Bush, Karl "Black Baby" Rove, and Dick "What Constitution?" Cheney are far less reputable than the man that the people of Chicago named "Citizen of the Year" in 1997. Menachem Begin was a terrorist in his youth, and no one would ever suggest that he couldn't be a confederate of a decent and honorable man.
You have also said that the most important factor in your choice in a candidate for Vice President is that s/he be ready to serve on Day One. It became painfully evident in the Katie Couric interview that Sarah Palin was manifestly unqualified to be President and now, the vetting you failed to do is being done by the media, to disastrous effect. Abuse of power is the worst offense I can think of, and it appears self-evident that Gov. Palin is vindictive and dishonest.
Finally, a leader must be calm in a crisis, and able to see crises before they materialize. By that metric, your handling of our current economic crisis has been an "epic fail." The crisis you couldn't even see one week beforehand required you to suspend your campaign, but only after you ate a gourmet meal in New York the night before?! You are so out of touch that you can't even begin to understand the real problems real people have.
I am a Republican precinct committeeperson, and can say that in my precinct, not one of the forty-plus voters who cast a ballot supported you on that night. And you have done nothing to justify any change in that view. Even William F. Buckley's son has abandoned you -- with good reason:
But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, "We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us." This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget "by the end of my first term." Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self- dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
You are, in essence, King McBeth -- sacrificing your honor on the altar of blind ambition. I miss the old John McCain; try as I might, I can't pull the lever for McCain 2.0.
I strenuously doubt that you will listen, but at least, you and yours should know why you deserve to lose your bid for the White House. If your father and grandfather could only see you now....
Regards [a Colorado Republican]
My friends, I don't even think Donetta Davidson can steal enough votes to overcome this kind of sentiment.