Dear Senator McCain:
Just like you, I am not one to mince words, so let me get straight to the point.
I am pleased to hear that the prospect of the Democrats gaining total control of the federal government concerns you. And I agree that my help is needed right now.
That’s why I have dedicated myself to volunteering for the Obama campaign to ensure that for once our country can change course from the disastrous last eight years. I once thought that you might be different than the other Republicans, that you would actually think before following the party line, but in the last few weeks I have come to see that you are exactly the same.
You now support those tax cuts for the wealthy you once called irresponsible. You now engage in the same smear tactics you once decried when they were used against you. Your fanatic fixation on victory at all cost, no doubt a remnant of your regret about the Vietnam War, continues to bleed our country dry, in terms of soldiers’ lives as well as money spent. You have yet to define what victory means. You claim you put country first, yet you pick a vice presidential candidate who doesn’t read newspapers and thinks living close to Russia is enough foreign policy experience. You now say we need energy independence, but for years you voted against any and every alternative energy measure that came your way. You say you support our veterans, yet you didn’t even deem it necessary to vote for the new GI bill that will help our veterans coming home from Iraq, where you no doubt prefer to keep them indefinitely.
You like to portray yourself as a “steady hand” with the experience needed to run our country. What kind of steady hand was it that made you jump around like a flea on ways to fix the economy? Don’t you think people see through your frantic efforts to appear like a leader, when all you’re doing is trying to read the mood and come up with proposals that sound like good leadership? Don’t you think people remember that you hailed deregulation as the gospel of free markets?
How preposterous of you to tell me what Americans want and don’t want. Of course people don’t want higher taxes, but they finally understand that you need to earn what you spend. What is true for all of us is true for the federal government too. You like to raise fears about the “tax-and-spend liberal Democrats,” but isn’t the idea of federal government to first tax and then to spend? What are you, a “borrow-and-squander conservative Republican?” Of courses people don’t like higher gas prices, but they finally understand that our only road to energy independence is to lower demand and find alternative sources of energy. If anybody is “ignoring the problem,” it is you, who for years refused to raise fuel efficiency standards, which would have helped greatly to lower demand for oil.
You think you can win me over with the promise of more tax cuts. True enough, Senator Obama’s plan will be less favorable to me than yours. But is that fair? And in the end, will it even benefit me? It’s safe to say, we are now all in worse shape than ever, due to irresponsible government for the past 8 years. I would gladly have paid higher taxes if our economy was still going strong. If Warren Buffett thinks he should be paying more taxes rather than less, I happily take my cue from him. He seems to have more economic foresight than you will ever have.
As you say, the outcome of this election will touch the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. But to claim that your ideas that perpetuate the ideas bred for the lasts 8 years will bring greater freedom, prosperity and peace, is so ridiculous it defies logic. Our prosperity is gone due to the same philosophy you espouse. You seem eager to start another war with Iran and possibly Russia, and refuse to sit down to negotiate with anybody, so where will your peace come from? A win by the Democrats, you claim, would lead us into a wilderness of big government babysitting. Are we not now, after 8 years of Republican rule, in that wilderness? Are we not rescuing companies that were happy to let the free market bring record profits to them but prefer that their losses be socialized?
Frankly, even if Senator Obama had not a single proposal for the future of our country, it would still be a safer bet to try him out rather than go with the same disastrous policies that led us to where we are today. But seeing as he actually has very sound ideas, the specter of him in the White House, together with a Democratic Congress, is quite pleasing to me. You call this the most radical and extreme shift in the direction of our nation in American history. I think you’re onto something here. A radical shift IS needed for this great nation to survive and prosper in this new century.
So I’m sorry to say that I will not be donating to your campaign today. I will not be placing an Emergency Campaign Contribution in the enclosed pre-paid, pre-addressed Federal Express Overnight Envelope. I will not help you win this campaign.
Sincerely,
Sine Thieme
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