Tuesday, October 07, 2008

McCain and the Dow

The Nightly Build...

Rod Dreher's Love/Hate Relationship

Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, concludes that today's 500 point drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average after the "staggering 4,619 point" drop over the last year pretty much wipes out any value in the McCain futures market this election cycle.

Poor Rod Dreher. He's had a love/hate relationship with Republicans this whole election. Reading him was like watching someone on an emotional roller coaster.

His first love was Mike Huckabee as he couldn't stand McCain's support for continued war in Iraq and an endless presence afterwards. But he couldn't stomach Obama's support for a woman's right to choose, so when McCain won the nomination, Dreher felt destined to sit this election out.

When McCain chose Sarah Palin for Vice President, Dreher's heart fluttered anew, maybe not as much as National Review's Rich Lowry, but enough to overlook McCain's neo-conservative foreign policy. After all, Palin promised to deny abortion rights even to victims of rape or incest. Then, Palin gave a couple unscripted interviews and Dreher despaired again, knowing that his hopes to overturn Roe v. Wade were in the hands of a local politician from Wasilla, Alaska in way over her head. When Palin learned her talking points well enough to get through a debate with Joe Biden, Dreher dared hope again.

Finally, now that Wall Street's collapse continues unabated, Dreher concludes that "in this economic environment, Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could firebomb Norman Rockwell's house screaming 'Free Charles Manson!', and it wouldn't help McCain much." Dreher almost sounds regretful, not because negative campaigning is distasteful to him, but because it won't be enough to help the McCain/Palin ticket. He keeps telling us he's not in love, but his actions keep saying otherwise.

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