Wyoming Vote Tracker

My friends, I have traveled a long road to get to this point. I have had nothing but a good run of bad luck when it comes to Presidential endorsements, in this, my first Presidential year of blogging.

I had hoped for Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) about this time last year, but I just couldn’t get others excited about him. My blogging friends in Fremont County, WY took a liking to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA). After getting to meet him in Riverton, I could hardly disagree. Hunter was my man, and though not well known, he would surge to great heights in the Republican Party because the base wanted a real, true, genuine, authentic conservative on all points.

January 5th rolled around, and in the first state to award delegates (Wyoming), Rep. Hunter received one delegate and one alternate. His wife was at the Cheyenne convention and called Wyomingites “real.” Yes-sir-ree, Rep. Hunter was well on his way to attaining the 1,200 delegates needed for the nomination and it all started in Wyoming!

Yea, it went all the way to South Carolina just a couple weeks later and never grew. Bummer. Fred Thompson, now there was a sharp guy. He came to Wyoming and when he talked, he reminded you of the current Vice President. He was deep, thoughtful, intellectual, and conservative. He even admitted that his vote for Campaign Finance Reform, though it looked good at the time, resulted in bad legislation. Plus he had three delegates from Wyoming, a lot more than that little known Representative from southern California. The only bad news about Sen. Thompson was that on the day I was going to write a ringing endorsement of him on my blog (just a few short days after Rep. Hunter left), he dropped out. Double bummer.

Where to go now? Mitt Romney was rather intriguing. He made some conversions on social conservative issues during his time of Governing liberal Massachusetts. Granted, there was the Mormon thing to consider, but he at least had a conservative family values-based religion, even if I did disagree with it on various issues, Plus, he liked the West (duh!), and well-known Evangelicals from the Bible Belt endorsed him. And how can you beat eight delegates from Wyoming?

I felt like life was finally stabilizing and it wouldn’t be long for Huckabee to get out of Romney’s way to steamroll over McCain and get the delegates needed for the nomination. Then this event called CPAC happened. Rumors began flying that Romney was set to suspend his campaign. Right, the guy that conservatives like is going to drop out? Huckabee is the one that needed to leave. He was in third and double-teaming with McCain to keep Romney from success! The speech came and it was too energizing to be a suspension announcement, that is, until he said he was suspending. I was officially out of steam. My party had abandoned me, and I knew how Zell Miller felt in 2004.

Then Operation: Chaos started. While it humored me, I was still disenchanted. No hard core conservative was going to come of keeping the top two Dems fighting each other to the end of their convention. Then I began seeing Obama and Clinton were not all that different. McCain still didn’t thrill me, but I finally came to the conclusion that a third party vote only helped the Democrat win, and I couldn’t live with that.

McCain made a major shift on off-shore drilling that I really liked and I figured at the very least, I could carry that into the voting booth with me. Right to Life said McCain was not all that bad on the abortion issue, and now the Bush tax cuts were a good thing. Pull out the clothespins, and if need be, have one of the poll-workers fill in the McCain/Who-knows-who oval! Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but hey, I already scraped to the bottom of my barrel and came up empty.

Now if we could just get a good Veep. After all, McCain’s not exactly what anyone would call a young Republican, and he’ll need someone we the base can trust to fill in should the need arise. Not that I wished harm on the man, it was just a real possibility. Romney seemed like the good choice. Social conservatives liked him, but there was that sect of evangelicals that thought he had no business leading the country, so it was a tough call. People talked about Huckabee, but McCain got his use out of him in  the primnary cycle, so he was out. Hunter would have been great, but his name never came up. Then folks started calling Rush and talking about this Republican governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Alaska? A woman? Turns out she’s very conservative? Hmmm, interesting possibilities. After much consideration, I added the unofficial Draft Palin for Veep blog to my endorsed candidates list. Granted, she seemed like a long shot, but so was everyone else I was backing for the White House.

Time went on and I never really talked about her. Another lady had my heart right here in the Cowboy State, and it was rough and gruff politics to make sure that Cynthia Lummis became our nominee for U.S. House. I did give Gov. Palin one mention in passing in a blog post about it being OK to support the right women for the right offices, but that was about it.

Senator McCain shocked my socks off when he answered so confidently and conservatively the questions that Rick Warren posed to him, but shortly after that, someone had to bring up Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman. Yea, that would be a great way to undo confidence established in saying that human rights are bestowed at conception and that your Presidency would be a pro-life one.

Lieberman/Ridge speculation lingered a bit longer than I was comfortable with. Romeny seemed to come back around the bend for a shot at the nod, then Thursday night, it was all about Pawlenty. Well, OK. Pawlenty seemed tolerable. He garnered the hopes of bringing in midwestern electoral votes and was conservative, just not all that exciting and different like another governor I was cheering for.

Then I woke up Friday and news from the outsiders was that it was going to be Palin. Nothing about last nights star Tim Pawlenty (which I could see how one might mis-hear Palin as Pawlenty). I woke up and thought I was having a very good dream. McCain/Palin? Riiiiiight. Sure, she was mentioned from time to time, and she even admitted to having submitted vetting papers, but she didn’t get the coverage that the others did.

To JohnMcCain.com I went and an editorial from the Denver Post was posted on why McCain was the choice for women. Nothing about Gov. Palin, but the timing was curious. Could it be a prelude of things to come? And how did the Denver Post know to run this on this particular day? A headline drops from FOX News that Romeny’s out. Yes, now things were looking very curious. No “unity ticket” here, unless he decided to be himself and name Sen. Obama’s worst nightmare that didn’t even get vetted.

Shorly after 8:30 Mountain Time, ABC News breaks into the tape-delayed broadcast of Good Morning America with a special report. I’m thinking it’s about the hurricane slamming the Gulf Coast ahead of the convention. Nope, insiders now confirmed Gov. Sarah Palin was going to be named as McCain’s Running Mate in about 90 minutes. I was in shock and awe. McCain actually showed his conservative colors and picked a conservative!

Like many, I got to watch the announcement on FOX News (it pays to be a housekeeper on a slow well-staffed day) and I’m glad that I wasn’t the only one that had tears welling up. It was sooooooooooo good to see a McCain rally that had a genuinely excited crowd. Even Sen. McCain had a smile that went from ear to ear. He looked great!  And then when he finally introduced Gov. Palin, and her family came out, she was dressed as a woman,  the crowd was still excited, she was excited, her family was excited. She talked about her accomplishments. I had chills running up my spine. I felt like Mrs. Obama, because for the first time in a long time, I was proud to be voting Republican in the Presidential Race of 2008.

It gives me great pleasure to encourage you to go to the voting booth this November and leave your clothespins at home. Sen. McCain has shown he intends to be a conservative President, and if the need arises, a conservative will be there to stand in the gap. The McCain/Palin ticket is perhaps the most exciting ticket that my generation has seen. Could this be a taste of what it was like to be a Republican in 1980 and 1984? I don’t know, but I sure do like what I smell cooking!

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