I’ll get the rest of it in a few minutes. My fiance is sick and I don’t want to settle down until I’m sure she’s tended to and asleep.

I’ll give you an update once I’ve had a chance to see the rest of it.

If you have come to your decision on those metrics, that is your choice and I respect that choice. I am aware of the very same data you have presented and I do not interpret it in the same fashion. And no, I am not mentally deficient in the slightest.

I have had associates, though I would not go so far as to say friends, who had done things in their lives I found despicable, self-destructive, and frightening. Some had repented and made amends, others had not. If you attempted to judge my character based on the people I’ve known you might assume I was someone who sold hard drugs and hated Jews.

I have never done an illegal drug in my life (nor sold one) and I am Jewish. That said, you could very easily interpret my past associations that way in much the same way you’ve interpreted Senator Obama’s. One might also see my willingness to associate myself with you folks at RedState as a sympathy with your ideology. It isn’t.

I cast a wide net. I learn from those I meet, so long as that association does not put me or those I care about in danger. What may seem a casual or even warm association to your eye might be something else entirely to me. You don’t know that. You can’t. In this, I suspect, I see the world in much the same way Senator Obama does.

I don’t see evil as some kind of slime that literally oozes off of people and onto others by mere proximity.

Vote however you like. I would be violating my stated promise to you folks at RedState if I ever attempted to dissuade you, and I am a man of my word. If there’s anything I’d like you to take away from my presence here it is this:

There are people in this country who love it every bit as much as you do yet disagree with you quite strongly on how we bring about prosperity, opportunity, and freedom for all. You walk one path, I walk another. I wish you well on yours. All I ask is the same in turn.

Such words will likely carry little meaning or have little effect so close to the election. The cleavages betwixt us become all the greater at such times.

Do I think that Senator McCain is encumbered by various albatrosses? Absolutely! Does the media treat him fairly? No, but some of what you see as anti-McCain bias is an honest assessment by the media as to how they actually see things. Some is overt cheerleading too. I can’t argue with that, nor will I try.

The greatest albatross around Senator McCain’s neck? No matter how much your party tries to pretend President Bush is a past tense issue, he’s still in office for a few months yet. Somewhat unfairly perhaps, many Americans will impute President Bush’s actions and character on Senator McCain. It can’t be helped, but in fairness they are of the same party.

This was always going to be an uphill struggle for your party. What I find amazing, absolutely amazing in my time here at RedState is this. You folks are willing to express your dissatisfaction with President Bush (by the by, some of my issues with him are the same as some of yours), but it doesn’t quite click for some of you that while you see him as a very poor conservative (spends too much), he’s still of your party. You all own his successes and his failures. So does Senator McCain.

You’re all very sure of your beliefs. I respect that. You’re all absolutely certain that your ideas, properly applied, would bring about the most opportunity for the most people. Let’s assume that’s true for a moment. Why do you think that’s enough right now? A lot of people are very mad at President Bush, and some have very good reasons for it. A visceral anger such as this is simply too tough to trump by yelling “socialist” now and again. You’ve been trying to bring Obama down. You’ve not articulated a positive message, you haven’t made it plain HOW your ideas are better. Many people were better off in the 1990’s than the last seven years. Your party needs to do better in explaining why that facile understanding of the two parties is wrong.

Many of you are mad about your situation politically. I can’t say that I blame you. I wouldn’t enjoy such an uphill fight. But I just don’t understand why more of you don’t admit that your party has a lot to do with its problems.

Be well.

One of the most profound quotes ever on RedState:

This was always going to be an uphill struggle for your party. What I find amazing, absolutely amazing in my time here at RedState is this. You folks are willing to express your dissatisfaction with President Bush (by the by, some of my issues with him are the same as some of yours), but it doesn’t quite click for some of you that while you see him as a very poor conservative (spends too much), he’s still of your party. You all own his successes and his failures. So does Senator McCain.

I absolutely agree that George W. Bush is the root cause of the problems Republicans are facing. I personally think he will go down in history as one of our worst Presidents. Not simply because he did so many “bad” things but that he did so many “bad” things as a so-called conservative when the “bad” things he was doing were not conservative in the first place.

But the problem is, conservatives never owned up to that. Except for a very, very few exceptions, we conservatives Bush’s liberalism on. Indeed, the only thing I think we as a group spoke out about is his amnesty program for illegal aliens: I fear that even Harriett Miers would be on the Supreme Court now if it was not found out that she gave a couple of hundred dollars to a pro-abortion group many years ago (and possibly a speech in support of abortion rights, I honestly don’t remember the details at the moment).

But it did not have to be!

We conservatives could have spoken up and said that George W. Bush was most definitely not a conservative. We could have a stood athwart against his massive increase in the size of the Federal government. Even on the faulty way he was conducting the war in Iraq — which is a separate issue as to whether the war should have been commenced in the first place — we could have stood up and stood for our conservative principles.

But we conservatives did not.

Interestingly enough, John McCain was one of the very few Republicans who stood against the rapid increase in the size of the Federal government and the faulty strategy in the Iraq War; but how did we conservatives respond to John McCain?

We hated McCain the more.

And further embraced the failures and liberalism of George W. Bush.

Even now, I think many conservatives here on RedState will take offense at me calling George W. Bush one of the worst Presidents in history. But if he had the honesty and courage to recognize that before, conservatives and Republicans would not be in the predicament they are in now. We cannot blame the American people in general for blaming conservative principles for the failures of the country today when we conservatives did not have the courage to admit and tell them seven years ago that those failures were not the enactment of conservative principles.

Many conservatives lament that what the conservative movement needs is another Reagan but that is not true. What the conservative movement needs is another Goldwater. What the conservative movement needs is its conscience back.