STANDING FAST

Posted at 11:58 p.m. ET

The polls are bizarre.  Some show Obama with a double-digit lead.  Others show the race tightening.  I have no idea which is right. An informed source told me this evening that people at Republican National Committee headquarters are gloomy, and believe that the double-digit figure is accurate.  This, of course, may be spin, a way to lower expectations and whip the troops into action.  On the other hand, it may be an accurate reflection of internal polling.

Charles Krauthammer feels that this is the time for conservatives to stand fast.  His argument:

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain.

I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling "Stop!"

I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

I especially like the part about the state dinners.  I've argued many times that the party-invitation mentality is a powerful force in politics, one not to be underestimated.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

You mean, the saint acted in an unsaintly way?  Take this columnist's name.  Report him.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Bull's-eye.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is...

...Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

I wish the McCain campaign had the literary skill to put it that way.

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And finally...

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Well said.  Well reasoned.  I hope America listens.

October 23, 2008.