A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote against me?

I never thought I would hear my mother tell me she was voting for John McCain, let alone because she likes his choice of a running mate!

That was the thought I couldn’t get out of my head all weekend after our short conversation on politics Saturday afternoon. I was so distracted that I found myself thinking about that conversation as I rode my bike home from Onsted that night rather than paying better attention to what was going on around me. Eventually, I pulled over and put in my headphones to help keep my mind occupied, and it helped, but that nagging thought of “how could she support someone who is so against everything I thought she believed in” kept creeping in once in a while.

It’s not my place to judge her for supporting one political candidate or another, nor am I about to tell her whom I think she should vote for. However, in this case, especially when the election is not far away and the polls are so close, I can’t sit idly by either. I spent a little time this morning getting facts to back up my gut feeling that the McCain Pailn ticket is just wrong for our country, and then typed up a bulleted list of issues Palin supports and, last I knew, Mom did not. I added a few facts about how Palin has flip flopped on the issues to suit whatever vote she was courting at the time. I summed it all up with a note telling Mom that I was not out to tell her how to vote but thought she should know exactly who and what she would be voting to support should she cast a Republican vote for president in November. I did not go as far as telling her that a vote for the McCain Palin ticket was a vote against her own daughter, thought that is exactly how I am seeing this election.

I have NEVER in my life told my mother who I thought she should support, nor have I opened my mouth when we disagreed on whom to vote for. Something about this campaign is different. Maybe it’s the feeling I get when I hear people list “she’s a mother” as a valid reason for supporting a McCain Palin presidential ticket. Maybe it’s the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that happens when I read through just how vehemently opposed to equality and homosexuality she is. I understand not every candidate, particularly those on the republican side of the world, agrees with or supports homosexuality, but never has there been a vice presidential candidate who is such a staunch supporter of everything anti-gay, including financially supporting the “ex-gay” movement. She has not been publicly quoted as saying that she believes we should be eradicated from the Earth, but I get this strange feeling that’s exactly where she stands. Add into that her stance on all things environmental and her support of amending the US constitution to prohibit any recognition of same-sex unions (in any form not just “marriage”) and prohibiting all abortions and I cannot imagine what the country would look like after just four years should McCain win the election.

Here’s hoping for an Obama victory, or a job offer in Canada!