Memorable birthday for 2 Johns

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and I started it off online in the morning because my new work schedule has me off on Fridays. The chatter about McCain picking Sarah Palin got me really stoked. I read about her months ago (she had me at Lifetime NRA member) as a possible McCain VP choice, but she seemed to disappear in speculation quickly, so I gave up hope that McCain was that smart.

But the more I read Friday morning, the more I was convinced that this pick would happen. I was so stoked that I found the premature button at right and printed it out and made myself a paper button to wear on my t-shirt when I left about 10 for a haircut, doctor's checkup and then to go gun shopping. And when I heard on the radio that McCain had announced the pick at noon, I hollered like a banshee driving down the road. As McCain and I share the same birthday, she was a birthday present to the both of us. Woot!

To sweeten the day even more, I traded a S&W Model 21-4 .44 Special revolver at a gun shop for a pistol I've been wanting for some time but couldn't afford, a Sig Sauer P226 in .357 Sig caliber. I'll report more on that sweet deal later.

I was sitting in the doctor's waiting room about 11:30 listening to Wolf Blitzer on CNN as he speculated about the Palin pick announcement coming up shortly and he got David Gergen on to give his view. Gergen has got to be the least conservative supposed Republican in history. He served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations then topped that off with stints as advisor to Clinton and Bush I. Any so-called conservative who can work for Clinton is not the real deal.

Blitzer asked Gergen for his view on a possible Palin pick and the "expert" said it would be a terrible choice for McCain because Palin "has no foreign policy experience." I knew immediately that McCain would indeed pick Palin as she had just passed "the Gergen test."

As usual, Gergen was full of bull. He could have said Obama has no foreign policy experience and therefore picked Biden because he supposedly does. But being a liberal in conservative clothing, Gergen reliably mouthed the anti-Palin sentiment that was all he could come up with quickly.

I read a recent interview with Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager, where he said when the campaign is undecided on an issue, they apply the Gergen test. Find out what Gergen has said about it and then do the opposite.

In this case, the obvious brilliance of the Palin pick was the last thing Gergen would admit. She puts into play all those Hillary voters and I suspect will corral a goodly portion of that 18 million away from Obama. Plus she brings the entire social conservative wing of the GOP, which is the heart and soul of the party, safely back under the McCain-Palin banner. Dr. James Dobson makes that clear with his endorsement of McCain-Palin on Dennis Prager's radio show. This influential Christian leader had previously said he just could not vote for John McCain.

And all those bitter, backwoods rednecks clinging to their guns and God who occupy the middle of the political spectrum can get excited about lifetime NRA member Palin, who hunts, fishes and packs her own heat. Palin is also an extremely strong advocate of drilling for oil right here in the good ol' USA, including the "pristine" ANWAR site in Alaska, which McCain has declared off limits. She obviously knows a lot more about ANWAR than McCain does as governor of Alaska, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if she convinces McCain to change his view on that crucial issue.

In fact, I would say that energy might just be the biggest issue in this campaign. It certainly is the issue that offers the clearest contrast between the two opposing camps, McCain and the GOP who say Drill Here, Drill Now! and Obama, Pelosi and Reid who tout windmills and hot air.

BTW, if you haven't joined the 1,465,146 Americans who have signed the Drill Here, Drill Now! petition, do it now.

With a united GOP behind McCain and a significant splinter of the Democrat Party longing for Hillary, Obama may end up with the only reliably Democrat elements left in November, unions, NAACP blacks, Code Pink, gay rights, university ivory tower elitists and assorted nutroots.

That leaves everything from the middle to the right for McCain-Palin. This may be a Mondale-type landslide. When Mondale kicked off his run against Reagan with an outright pledge to raise taxes, all he ended up with was his home state of Minnesota. This race is still up for grabs, but the Palin pick does change everything. It could all break away from Obama and towards McCain from this point forward. Or not.

Mark Steyn, a Canadian, offers a very succinct comparison of Obama-Biden vs. McCain-Palin.

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy....

Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Mark Steyn is persona non grata in his own way-too-PC country and plain talk like this is why. I hope he moves here permanently because we need more voices like his to be heard. Unless this becomes Obama Land. Then God help Mark and all of us if it does.