I’ve been trying to find the right message for my first post-election essay. Looking for the perfect words, the most moving theme, what people need to hear. I’ve been riding on a seismograph of emotion, up from crying on the phone with my mom to angry debating with a stranger in the dorm lounge, down to denial and shock, and finally finding a positive medium where I can find contentedness in my faith in America’s resilience. My father encouraged me with a reminder of my own strength and that of my political brethren. We have been hurt, there’s no doubt, but we’re not dead.

I know that my party is not done. While we’re going to have it rough for a few years, fighting to balance seemingly unchecked liberal control in all three branches of the government, we can do it. We should’ve known all along that we’d never go down without a fight; this election was just one round in a series of many matches to come. Let’s call it a warm-up. We are going to regroup after this loss, pick up our things, center ourselves, and move on. We will use this defeat as a wakeup call, alerting our members with a call of duty. We have a job to do now, and it’s time to get to work.

All we need is a strong leader to emerge. That has been our downfall over the past few years, no impressive orator, no head honcho, no Reagans or Buckleys or Lincolns. I don’t know who it will be or where the person will come from, but I’ll be looking. Maybe Palin, maybe someone we haven’t heard from yet, maybe someone we won’t expect. No matter who it is, the bottom line is that this person needs to make him or herself known soon. In the meantime, the rest of us need to man up, get together in our towns, and prepare our revolution.

If you’re a conservative reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about and you’re with me. If you’re a liberal reading this, you think I’m crazy. But you’re not my audience right now, so that’s ok. This is a message to Sean Hannity’s “Conservative Underground.” We’re in it together, and we’re going to win. It has started already. Walking to my first class this morning, I had an unspoken bond with everyone I passed wearing black. We’d nod a somber nod to one another, and no one else seemed to see it. If secrecy and stealth missions are the future of the Republican Party, so be it. We’re good at stuff like that.

As scared as I am for the future of our country and of our party, I am hopeful, because I know how strong we are. We have stood against evil before and won, and those are the battles that trained us. Our courage has been fortified in the fires of war, our faith is founded in God’s will, and our characters have been tested, more tryingly in recent months than perhaps ever before, and have passed with flying colors. Our patriotism is not this easily snuffed, and we know that America is the greatest nation on earth, one well worth the battle ahead of us. We have fought for Her glory before. We will do it again, starting today.

Do not be discouraged. Instead, take this as a warning of things to come if we continue to do nothing. If we all still want prosperity and peace and reform, failure is not an option at this point. Dress your wounds and come with me.

While we’ve still got the right to bear them, I’m bellowing a call to arms. Republicans of America: It’s go time.

This is the third shift in a row that I've spent hours sitting at our customer kiosk with absolutely nothing to do. There are no customers now, there haven't been since I got here two hours ago, and there probably won't be for the next two hours I have to stay awake through before I go home. I'm bored out of my mind.

So I took the opportunity to think. And if you know me at all, you know my mind wandered to politics. With only four days until the election, this whole economic recession thing is just now hitting me. I knew it was bad, but I didn't see it affecting me too strongly. After all, I'm poor, I have no stock or investments, no 401K, no business ownership in jeopardy, and I'm just a kid. I thought I'd be immune from the aftermath of an economy gone sour, but the silence in this empty Best Buy is screaming otherwise.

If we fall into recession, it's affecting every single one of us. Companies, even huge ones like the one I work for, will have to budget labor hours into such scarcity as to lay off employees left and right. I'm new at this store, so if my department needs to trim the fat, I'm the first to go. I wouldn't be able to find another job because no one would be hiring. I'd run out of money fast. I wouldn't be able to buy food for myself or help pay my college bills or put gas in my car. I would have no idea what to do.

What about everyone else? The people who have to pay rent every month and feed their kids and keep the electricity on? Their collectors will come to call much faster than mine if their money runs out. The pending recession became a frightening reality to me tonight. And what is further frightening is the idea that this recession is signed, sealed, and delivered if Obama wins on Tuesday.

Every other time in history that the U.S. has neared recession and subsequently raised taxes, economic doom has followed. Obama has been pressed on this and has stuttered nonesense about how this time it won't happen. Because he's just awesome enough to defy historical fact.

Here's the bottom line: When Obama's tax promises go into effect, any hope of economic well being plummets. It goes right down the drain. Unemployment will skyrocket. My own might contribute to that figure, as might yours. So on Tuesday, please vote McCain, and then come buy a cell phone from Best Buy. I'll thank you twice for double-insuring my job security.

It’s not over yet.

I thought it was a done deal. I thought Obama had it in the bag, I thought McCain WAS an old bag, and I thought I’d have to move overseas. But a Republican victory could still happen, and I’m going to do everything in my power to assist it.

It took the comment of the stranger to alert me as to how negative and embittered I’ve become in my posts lately. (S)He said something about how I couldn’t be surprised that people in my dorm were lashing out against me when I was sending out so much anger myself. While I am still angry, and very much afraid, I’m starting to see the light at the end of a formerly closed tunnel, and from here on out, my message will be one of hope. Not in the smarmy Barack way, but in a genuine, starry-eyed youth sort of way. If elementary school fluff taught me anything, it’s that dreams are possible, and I can be and do whatever my heart desires. And what I desire now is a McCain triumph, an Obama annihilation, and proof that our country still has two brain cells to bang together.

But Kelly, you might say, I thought you’d given up! After all, the polls show Obama leading, you’re surrounded by his followers everywhere you go, and there’s less than two weeks left ‘til election day!

Maybe this is what the news media, a source that has been unashamedly vocal in their one-sided support, would like everyone to believe, because if our competitiveness gets choked, we’ll give up and hand the crown over to their golden boy. Their sneaky tactics worked well, even fooling me into a temporary, premature defeat. But let us not forget that polls have lied before. If polls were always right, Carter would’ve beaten Reagan, and both Kerry and Gore would’ve beaten Bush Jr. The Electoral College predictions are too close to call right now, and the polls are slowly but surely swaying away from Obama, even if it’s only a percent or two. The race isn’t over.

So to my fellow McCain supporters: don’t shut up and don’t lose faith. Keep campaigning and spreading the word, and don’t you dare stay home and opt out of voting because you think it’ll do no good. And heck, even if we lose, we’ll still know we were right. We’ll all get those bumper stickers that say, “don’t blame me, I voted for McCain,” and everyone else will watch us drive by as they’re waiting in line at public hospitals for hours upon hours or pawning off their jewelry to pay exorbitant taxes or holding their breaths for that first time Obama gets “tested.” We’ll probably be miserable, sure, but we’ll have been right, and that might be all it takes to get us through four years of hell.

Stay strong. I’ll see you at the booths.

While I always pictured Robin Hood as a cartoon fox in a jaunty green number, he is, apparently, a 47-year old Senator of Kenyan/Caucasian birth sporting everything but a flag pin. I had no idea.

But perhaps you’d say that Robin Hood was a good guy. Someone you’d like to vote for. He helped the poor and stuck it to that evil King Richard and made everything better for the whole land. And maybe this was a legitimate cause under a stagnant English monarchy wherein the poor were truly unable to thrive. But this is America, and that’s just not the way we do things.

A friend of mine told me about one of her coworkers, a guy who is fully aware of Obama’s socialist tendencies but doesn’t seem to mind. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked my conservative compadre, baffled that her opposition to socialism was her main argument against Barack. I guess on the surface, a socialist nation doesn’t look so bad. Everyone has the same amount of money so no one feels inferior or is destitute, and all the people start and stay on the same class level. It’s like a private school with uniforms: if we all look the same, no one will be jealous or distracted or slutty.

I went to a private school one year. I hated those plaid skirts and cardigans more than anything in my life.

Barack Obama’s agenda to “spread the wealth around” is frightening. What’s more frightening is how he thinks it’s N.B.D. He’s been talking about a socialized economy (and socialized health care, but I’ll rip on that some other day) since this whole thing started, and people have been going right along with it. The way Obama explains his system, with his taxation of big corporations and tax credits to middle and lower class families, sounds just like President Robin Hood, only in Obama’s case it’s the rich stealing from the rich and giving to the less rich (because let’s face it, America, no one here is truly impoverished by international standards).

I know the story has been harped on endlessly since the last debate, but I feel it’s relevant here, so here’s my comparison using Joe the Plummer:
Obama’s new tax policies would discourage success. Joe wants to better himself by buying a company, something he has worked very hard to be able to do, but once he does so, he’ll be taxed into the poor house and have to close his brand new business. And Obama’s claim that only a “small percentage” of small businesses will be affected by his tax reform is crap; the average small business is making $3.6 million per year, and Obama’s plan would tax them almost $230,000 per year more than they’re paying now. I don’t know about you or your small business, but I say 230k is a decent chunk of change, one I’d rather not see spread into a socialist system that provides cash for the undeserving.

Allow me to make my last statement clear: NOT EVERYONE DESERVES GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE. There are some people in America who do absolutely nothing for themselves. Spoiled brat princess girls, drug addicts who make no attempt to quit, the just plain lazy. I will not pad their pockets, understand? I work hard for the money I earn, and if I continue to work hard and someday become wealthy, I should not be penalized for it, and those who have not worked hard should not be rewarded for it. America is a land of opportunity. The American Dream is achieving enormous success from humble beginnings, and when we begin to cut down those who make it to the top, people will stop aiming for it. Why should Joe the Plummer be motivated to buy the company he wants when it’s a guaranteed tax hike? He might as well stay where he is because it’s less stress, less responsibility, and essentially more pay.

So if no one is willing to take on the stress and responsibility and voluntary pay cuts, who’s going to lead us? Who’s going to shoot for the stars and start the small businesses and further our economy and participate in capitalism and stimulate ingenuity? When Obama’s in charge? No one.

Funny how a man who is running under a guise of hope is proposing legislation that quashes optimism. Enjoy turning into Cuba, people. I’ll be the one saying I told you so.

It seems strange that there has been so little campaign activity in the past few weeks. I haven’t seen any outlandish breaking news or scandals, no badmouthing from one side the other, no venomous ads, not even any vandalism on my door. It’s as though we’re in this eerie calm before the political storm, and I’m not sure if I should wait it out or start stocking up on canned goods.

I claim not to be a prophet, but I feel like, just maybe, I might know what’s coming. This idea isn’t purely of my own premonition, mind you; many strategists have been musing over this quiet possibility since the RNC and are just holding their breaths for the moment it actually happens. Predictions say: Biden is stepping down, Hillary is swooping in.

This notion terrifies some people. It encourages some others. I’m not sure how I feel about it. My first assumption is that it would backfire. Everyone would be able to see (because the transparency is atrocious) that it’s out of pure strategy and is a lame, copycat move because Sarah Palin has shaken poll numbers like crazy since her debut. Replacing Biden with Hillary would put another tick mark under the already crowded “Obama Copies McCain Whenever Popular” column, and maybe, finally, people would start to see that the self-proclaimed catalyst of change really isn’t much of a free thinker.

The Republican ticket is getting more female support than ever. Obama, assuming his studliness would woo every woman’s vote (a tactic that was actually working for a while), is a little T.O.’ed that Palin has teetered her gender’s opinion. His vengeance may come in the form of the thing closest to a woman the Democrats have to offer: Hillary Clinton. Would it work? Would the women return to the Blue camps because Hillary, their heroin, came back as a second-best to the party’s golden boy?

Or would her supporters still feel shafted?

And would Hillary even be willing?

Or, the scenario I see as the most likely, everything might just even out, and this whole upheaval will have been for not. Some Hillary supporters will be happy to see their girl’s name under VP, and they’ll vote with the Democrats. Some Hillary supporters will be disgusted to see their girl’s name under anything but President, and they’ll vote with the Republicans as a silent protest. Women on the fence will be split down the middle, some thinking that Obama finally came to his feminist senses, and some thinking that making such a drastic change this late in the game is a foreshadow to how erratic his presidency would be. Polls will rise, fall, and readjust to approximately right where they are now.

And right now, McCain is owning. So do it, Obama. I really don’t mind.

When I first came to college, I kept my mouth generally shut whenever someone brought up politics, mostly because I could tell that the speakers who initiated such discussions were the overly-vocal, stubborn, uninformed members of their respective parties, and whatever I had to say, be it in support or opposition, would be discounted. I then quietly staked my claim as a proud Republican, and, as many of you know, I got a decent amount of flack for it (on a side note, my beliefs remain unaffected).

Things quieted down after people started to realize that—what a shocker—I might actually know what I’m talking about. They didn’t start agreeing with me, and I didn’t expect them to, but they at least respected my opinions and noted that they were all backed with factual support and logic. But I am not by any means the only Republican in history to have substantiated my platform. For some reason, though, we have been conditioned to think that we’re wrong, to think that we should be ashamed of ourselves for sporting elephants and red, to think that we shouldn’t speak because someone else will attack. We have, therefore, been silenced, and have thus lost touch with our comrades.

But we are not rare. We are not the minority. We are equally numbered and equally strong. We’re just not as damn loud about it.

I have two bumper stickers on my car, one that states simply “McCain for President 2008” and another that subtly reads, “No thanks, keep the change.” Driving to Boulder this past weekend, I stopped at a red light and noticed in my rear-view mirror a man and his wife reading the back of my car. They chuckled, saw that I saw them, and gave me a thumbs-up. Later, the same stickers got me flipped off, but I was still so happy about the first reaction that I didn’t care. I was glad to be a lifeline for one conservative couple stuck in a liberal town. I was glad to be a ray of hope that told them, “no, you’re not alone.”

I know you think I’m overdramatizing this, but until you’ve had your political identity stifled into a coma, you can’t understand. And in the past two days since the thumbs-up incident, I have had a girl stop by my dorm to thank me for being her fellow Republican, and another message left on my whiteboard saying, “Yay McCain! Finally!” These people have been so starved for allies, fighting so hard not to be force-fed false hope and loose change, that something as simple as a sticker can create a haven for them.

If you’re preaching coexistence, practice it. Let the Republicans of the world thrive, too, and don’t try to shame us for thinking our thoughts. We might not be the media’s favorite children or live beneath rainbows or really, really hate guns, but we have the same liberties as the Democrats next door. Grant us our rightful speaking privileges, if you would be so kind.

And, to the Republicans in the audience, quit shutting up.

I was half-heartedly watching some late-night television before bed when everyone started insulting Sarah Palin, her pregnant daughter, and the family’s very lifestyle. Conan O’Brien, pretending to quote the governor, said “everyone knows marriage isn’t for gay people—it’s for pregnant teenagers!” He also said that as Palin is a member of the NRA, she must be in favor of “shotgun weddings.” Craig Ferguson, in reference to McCain’s recent endorsement from the Log Cabin Republicans, said, “Here’s a group that won’t embarrass (him) with any surprise pregnancies!” Finally, Jimmy Kimmel jested that Palin’s main campaign promise was to put “a walrus in every igloo and a whale tooth in every papoose.”

Now, I understand that these men make jokes for a living and I’m not to take these words as venomous or hateful or serious in any way. But the above words of these men are simply humorous retellings of actual arguments brought up by the media and the Democrat party. These most recent slams are utterly dripping with hypocrisy and mixed messages, and it’s all leaking in and oozing out from every imaginable angle. I’m appalled that that party hasn’t yet registered some of this double-talk and tried to bathe away the shame. If you haven’t yet figured it out, allow me to enlighten:

The situation with Palin’s daughter is not only a living testament to the ticket’s strong pro-life backbone, but an embodiment of a class of women that the Democrat party says it fully supports. One major demographic for liberals, now and in past elections, has been single mothers. They struggle to make ends meet, they are sacrificial and selfless, and they deserve a leg up from the government (although Obama seems to think otherwise, if you’d like to reference http://freshelephant.blogspot.com/2008/08/fillet-mignon-and-fatherhood.html). Bristol Palin could be one of these single mothers, should her boyfriend flake out, and she’s having her baby anyway. She is going to face extreme emotional hardship, as all teen mothers do, and, if they are to be true to what they’ve always said, the Democrats should be eager to help her and all those like her.

Instead, they say that she’s proof of Palin’s irresponsible parenting (because all the Democrat kids I know obey their parent’s moral code 100%), and rumors have arisen, tabloid fire and TMZ igniting, that Palin’s youngest son, Trig, is secretly Bristol’s.

This isn’t The Young and the Restless, people, it’s a presidential election. Can we grow up, please?

Furthermore, people seem to discredit Palin because she’s from Alaska. It’s a small population, it’s separate from the rest of our states, so she’s obviously out of touch with everyone else (wait, isn’t Obama from Hawaii? Interesting…). This is another major flaw in the Democrat’s logic: Palin is a middle-class, hard-working woman, and her family is completely average. She has both been and lived with lower and middle-class Americans, just your typical blue-collar men and women, all just making a living. The people Palin governed were our bread-and-butter citizens.

Aren’t these the people the Democrats say they want to help? They’re going to get tax cuts, they’re going to get affordable health care. They’re our focus, our drive, our neighbors. They love them! But when a real, live member of the average American populace shows up, she is not in for love, but for criticism and disdain. Sure, maybe the Democrats want to help these people, they just want to keep them at arm’s length while they’re doing it. They’re fine giving them handouts, but not allowing actual success.

So Palin’s government experience isn’t good enough because it was “just Alaska.” Well, hell, at least it’s experience.

Palin has agreed to put herself up for public office and, therefore, we’re all entitled to poke and prod at her life and figure out if she’s up to par. Feel free to criticize. Just make sure that the things you chose to hate about her aren’t things your party stands to support.

Women’s liberation. It was about more than just burning your bras, letting your pits get furry, and shouting “down with makeup and panty hose!” It was about equal pay, divorce initiation rights, suffrage, access to higher education, and the opportunity to reach ambitious career goals. The huge feminist movement of the 1960s said, “I am woman, hear me roar!” The major accomplishments made therein were due in large part to Democrats, and they have since been seen as the party that fully supports a woman through all her endeavors.

Unless she threatens victory for the golden boy.

Since the announcement of McCain’s running mate, the prominent story the media has sunk its teeth into is whether or not Palin can be both a tenacious VP and a dedicated mother. “She’s got a child with special needs,” they’ve repeated, or “it looks like she has her priorities backwards.”

Funny how dedication to fatherhood has never been a factor when electing a male president with kids. I guess we all just figure the First Lady will keep the home going. She’ll wear the clean, white apron and bake gooey, chocolate cookies and shuttle the soccer team around and rub Mr. President’s tired feet and appear in a Hoover commercial, looking beautiful all the while, of course. Daddy’s busy running the country, so he’s excused from his fatherly duties.

This is disgusting. If a father can juggle a high political office and a family, so can a mother. Watching Palin’s children at the RNC tonight, it looks to me like the family is in full support of their matron, and that she’ll be able to stay fully involved in their lives while she pursues an important career goal. And her husband, the father of the house, will do just fine supplementing as the hockey team’s escort.

I hope Obama’s daughters don’t get neglected by Daddy while he’s in the Oval Office. But I guess Michelle alone is sufficient parental attention. Gag.

How dare the Democrats call themselves women’s liberators and simultaneously doubt the power of one of womanhood’s best representatives. Sarah Palin is intelligent, articulate, poised, strong, and capable. After seeing her speak tonight, I have no doubt that she will make a superb Vice President and maintain her standing as an involved mother.

Attention Democrats: cut the hypocrisy and quit doubting the power of a woman.

It’s easy to confuse liberalism with freedom because it initiates change, and the idea that nothing is concrete opens doors and therefore lifts any feelings of entrapment one might have. Conservatism works to keep things the same. While this may come across as stagnancy or limitation, if the thing being preserved is freedom, permanence is good.

Thus is the core difference between the two ideals: remember the anecdote, “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”? Conservatives noted the lesson; liberals did not. Barack Obama is the poster child for this bought of liberal blindness. His campaign has been built on the basis of change, and because everyone seems to hate the way things are right now, change sounds like what we need. Change sounds like liberation. It sounds like sunshine. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

But I’d rather watch a Disney movie if that’s the outcome I’m shooting for, not elect a Socialist. On the surface, Obama’s big changes make us want to stutter along with David Bowie lyrics, but when we listen to the record backward we hear the hidden messages, much like Satan left behind rock and roll in the 70s. The specific changes Obama wants to make will take us further from real freedom than we’ve ever been. If we need change, this isn’t it.

At this point, the conservative candidate is also proposing change, but in a much more positive way. McCain wants to return the core philosophies of the United States, the roots out of which we grew into such a strong establishment.

No one is satisfied with the way things are now. Everyone wants a change. But if we chomp at the bit at the mention of the word before we look into things more meticulously, we’re going to trip mid-race and get shipped to the glue factory. All I’m asking is that we vote with care. Study, divulge, scrutinize both candidates from home life to social ideas to moral codes to their whereabouts at the time of Nicole Simpson’s murder. If none of us can be open-minded enough to consider all the points on the table, we’ve become what we despise about our opposition.

Please, at least smell the Kool-Aid first.

I just got my daily email from newsmax.com informing me that Obama has won the delegates and will be the official Democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential campaign. Half of me is happy it's not Hillary (one, because I'm not exactly a fan of hers and, two, because I think she would've had a better chance at beating McCain), and the other half is shriveling up into a terrified little rat fetus thinking about Obama winning in November.

I know that a huge number of Americans support Barack Obama, and I do not think any less of them as human beings because of that choice. I am able to distinguish someone's political views from their moral cores, from their personalities and souls. It is because of the distinction that I think a good chunk of these Obama fans could still be saved. There is hope that their characters will be empowered enough to beat the hell out of the political counterpart with which it shares a body (my sincerest apologies to any of you who sensed that condescention).

I never thought it was a big deal that I didn't like Obama. I thought, silly me, that it was my right as an American and, moreover, as a Republican. But evidently democracy is a bit more about face value and popularity these days. I once got the opportunity to explain to a friend, a tried and true blue-stater, exactly why I didn't like Obama. It's about his platform, I told him, and his background and his beliefs and the way that his stances on issues are polar opposites to mine. "Oh," he said back to me, "I thought it was just because he was black."

Now, I don't know if he was serious or not, because you never really can tell with him, but I know it's an assumption Democrats are making about Republicans on a daily basis: we're all just a bunch of redneck racists with active NRA memberships and moose heads mounted above our mantles. I call mine Morton. Wrong! It seems to me that in this election, race, a thing that many thought would work against Obama, will, in fact, work in his favor as a subliminal guilt tactic. Thanks to the blind blissfulness that the backwards logic of affirmative action has induced in us Americans, we will vote for Obama not because he's black, but because he's not white. Because if we don't vote for him, we're racists.

Funny, I thought I was supposed to be colorblind.

The way I see it: He's inexperienced. He's unqualified. He has skeletons being dragged out his closet at a rate I can only compare to watching bunnies mate, but no one seems to care. He's developed some sort of Messiah aura, and no matter what he says or does wrong, he is forgiven. I saw a poll today on Fox News (which is obviously an incredibly biased source because sometimes they present a story from the sides of both parties. What jackasses.) that said the 48% of Democrats thought it was likely that Obama shared anti-American and racist views with his pastor, Reverend Wright. It's pretty intense that almost half of his own party thinks he might be a racist. But what shocked me most was that of this 48%, only 26% would question voting for him because of it. They've acknowledged his racist tendencies, and they'd still put him in office. I'm a little dumbstruck.

Whenever I tell someone I'm voting for McCain, the first thing they throw in my face is how he voted against MLK Day, saying he's some kind of white supremacist. So, fine, it looks like we have two racists pitted against each other. Why is mine somehow worse than yours?
I can honestly state that race is not a factor for me in this election. And I'd appreciate it if you'd all allow me my free speech (even though that's a right typically reserved for Democrats, I know) in supporting the candidate I see fit, even if he's just an old white guy. Thank you.