Let's see now, who runs John McCain's campaign? Lobbyists. Since the inception of his campaign many key posts are or have been held by current or former big player lobbyists. His legislative record is replete with votes favoring special interests, and he has consistently used his office to promote corporate agendas. At this stage in the game can anyone seriously believe that "what's good for GM is good for the country?"
Country First? Just like the "Patriot" Act that is actually a treasonous undermining of the Constitution, our right-wing is again cynically touting a feel-good slogan that suggests that they are the protectors of our values, when in fact their actions demonstrate the opposite.
The lobbyists who run McCain's campaign, and who presumably came up with this catchy slogan know their own agenda: Corporate Profiteering First. Corporate decision-making is based on one thing and one thing only: their own bottom line, and the public be damned, the workers be damned, the communities they operate in be damned, as well as any politicians that propose policies that serve the public good if it costs the corporations anything to comply.
Country first? How many of McCain's corporate donors are war profiteers, in a feeding frenzy to overcharge the US treasury for their goods and services? And if they are not war-profiteering they have, with the help of McCain, obtained government sweetheart contracts that do not put country first, but are the equivalent of theft of our treasure.
And Palin? Country First? Before becoming governor she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which wants to secede from the United States so as not to have to share their natural resource riches with the rest of us in the lower 48. She only left the party when she became mayor of her small town, which was a non-partisan position. Now, after the chairwoman of the party confirmed Palin had once been an AIP member, and after she supportively addressed their convention as governor, and the vice-chairman of the AIP gave a speech touting her as a former member, suddenly the official AIP line is that, no she was never a member. Her husband is, but not her.
Membership in AIP aside, listen to her speeches as Governor. She is anti-federalist. She places the interests of Alaska ahead of the interests of the country as a whole. To her, the rest of us are consumers of their natural resources, and though these resources are largely on federal land, she believes, like her husband and the AIP, that the federal government should not prevent them from doing whatever it takes to maximize the exploitation of these resources, for Alaskan profit, without regard to polar bears (she's sued the feds to take them off the endangered species list), global warming (she, like the neocons, believes it is not man-made), or the sanctity of ANWAR the last untouched wilderness on the planet.
Country First? You betcha! That's why I am voting for Obama/Biden.