I Will Never Vote for another Bush or McCain

I rarely say "never." It is as inane as saying "always." Of course, there are times when these two words are the only ones that work. And in this case, I mean it. I will never vote for another Bush or another McCain.

All together, I voted four times for a Bush and once for a McCain for President of the United States. In 1988, I voted for George Herbert Walker Bush against Michael Dukakis. And in 1992, I resisted the temptation to punish President "Read-My-Lips" by casting a vote for the Texas screwball, Ross Perot, thereby handing the presidency to Bill Clinton.

In 2000, there was no possible way I could mark a ballot for eco-fraud Al Gore, so George W. got my vote. And in 2004, when the president was running for reelection, it was a no-brainer against ultra-lib John Kerry.

In 2008, John McCain was my last choice for the Republican nomination. He redeemed himself, however, when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. And given a choice between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden, well, as the old saying goes, I was born at night but it wasn't last night.

But now, after recent statements by these people and their families, color me convinced. I will never vote for another Bush or another McCain. These two families are now contributing to the destruction of the social fabric of the United States as no other Republican has done in our lifetime. Former First Lady Barbara Bush, when asked last year about Sarah Palin, opined that the former Alaska governor seemed to love her home state — and should stay there. Bar's namesake, one of Dubya and Laura's mouthy little twin girls, recently appeared in a video proclaiming the following:

"I'm Barbara Bush, and I'm a New Yorker for marriage equality. New York is about fairness and equality, and everyone should have the right to marry the person they love. Join us."

Of course, John McCain's wife, Cindy, and their insipid, annoying daughter, Meghan, have expressed a similarly misguided view of marriage. And McCain himself now asserts that he can work with the new Barack Obama, who, the senator claims, has moved to the middle. The truth, sadly, is that the radically left-wing Obama would not have to move too far to the right to meet up with McCain, who never met a compromise he was unwilling to embrace. (I sometimes think that when future generations look up what was once found in the middle of the road, there, next to a picture of a dead skunk will be a photo of John McCain.)

But it is on the issue of illegal immigration that George W. Bush and John McCain, the two men who nearly destroyed the party of Lincoln and Reagan, have placed our nation at grave risk on so many different levels. McCain continues to push for an amnesty-based approach to so-called immigration reform. And during a recent speech at Southern Methodist University, Dubya said the following:

"What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, 'Who cares what happens in Europe?' And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these 'isms" pass."

I couldn't agree more that we have too many "isms." Like elitism, snobbism and statism. The next Bush in the family dynasty, Jeb, is increasingly mentioned as a potential candidate in '12 or '16. But the former Florida governor has expressed similar views on coddling the criminals who sneak across our border, leading me to conclude that I will write in the name of my cat before I will cast another ballot for a Bush or a McCain.