The recently leaked flurry of sordid and slanderous rumors that have supposedly emanated from disgruntled McCain campaign workers about Sarah Palin, and as reported by Fox News and other outlets, tells us several things. First, there is apparently not enough real news to fill the tedious 24/7 cable TV news cycle, and it should probably end and be replaced by something somewhat substantive like "I Love Lucy" reruns. Second, It is a telling sign of the pettiness and moral decline of the American people, and the inept bozos who now sadly run the fourth estate, that such cutting, mindless gossip is even considered newsworthy. Third, as I have always known, never trust a so-called "moderate Republican." Most of these clowns can pretty much be put into one of two categories: pusillanimous, politically correct pansies who are too timid to make a decision or take a stand, lest someone disagree with them, or worse yet, possibly take offense, or conniving, self-serving repugnant whores who would slit their own mother's throat for their own personal and/or political gain. And at heart, members of both categories lean far more to the left than ever, if at all, to the right.

I refuse to give these rumors, some already proven to be baseless, any more misplaced credibility, notoriety or fame, but one such rumor cited Sarah Palin showering in her hotel room when some of McNut's campaign staff came to get her. Some of the grapes on the vine claim that Palin answered the door in a bathrobe, while others claim she was wearing a towel. Let me tell you something folks, if I ever saw Sarah Palin in either a bathrobe or a towel, trust me, I would remember what she was wearing. In other words, these people can't even lie right, and even if she did answer the door in such a state of dress, she was showering at the time the McNut aids supposedly knocked on the door. What was she supposed to do? As for some of the other inane rumors out there, some of which sound ludicrous at face value, CNN's Campbell Brown, no friend of Republicans by any means, but to her credit, had the personal initiative and the professional integrity to investigate some of these ridiculous claims and reported that they are indeed, false.

"Birds of a feather flock together," as my sage mother has always said. I don't like sugary sweet, overly smiley people. I never did. Most of them are as phony as a three-dollar bill and would stab you in your back the minute you turned it to them. I also don't like women whom I have just met and don't know, such as a waitress in a diner, who calls me "Honey." I've been known to say to such people on one or two occasions, "My own wife of 20 years doesn't even call me 'Honey.' Who the hell are you?" Much of the same kind of feeling reverberated through my bones every time McNut began a sentence with, "My friends..." Life experiences have taught me that someone who is that inappropriately and intimately friendly when you barely know them can't be trusted, which is one of several reasons why I never trusted McNut. Of course, another reason is that anyone who calls his bus "The Straight Talk Express" has something to hide. Don't preach to me how honest you supposedly are. Just talk to me. I'll determine if you're truthful or lying. And McNut, on more than one occasion, either dodged a question, answered it wrong, or to quote him describing Obie in a campaign ad, "lied." Oh yes, I almost forgot...did I happen to mention that "Old maverick McNut" is also a "moderate Republican"?

As I have previously written, I like Sarah Palin, a lot. However, at closer scrutiny, she fell short of being the Reaganesque type of conservative I thought she was, and as she was originally sold to us. I've lost some wind in my sails for Sarah, but overall, I still like her. If she runs in 2012 for the number 1 slot, I would be willing to take a second look at her to see if anything has changed, and if she is charting her own course with her own platform and no longer being a good little soldier for McNut. My open mind on Sarah is also partially because of the recent encore performance of utter incompetence that our nation's third parties have once again characteristically displayed. OK, so Sarah isn't as conservative as I originally thought she was, but I do believe that she is still a conservative, and I also believe that she is still a person of quality character who is comfortable in her own skin, and she doesn't need any phony slogans or shallow salutations to prove it. Truth aptly speaks for itself. It doesn't need a marketing campaign.

Love her or hate her, this lady is a lady, and she has class. While holding a press conference in Anchorage, she still defended McNut as an honorable man. (That's her opinion.) She took the high road. When McNut's staff attacked her, she complimented him. But where is McNut? I don't recall him ever defending Sarah when some of the worst, most ugly and vitriolic false rumors anyone could ever dream of were lodged against her during the campaign, yet more than once, he defended his opponent, Obama, a Marxist, terrorist-loving, anti-American charlatan and Chicago political machine thug, and defended his so-called honor and patriotism. Meanwhile, McNut was as silent on defending his running mate then as he is now. Why? Because he's a self-aggrandizing idiot who didn't learn his lesson. In 2000, he was a media darling and the left's fair-haired boy, and he couldn't get enough affection from those whom he admired more than they actually admired him. In this race, he was looked upon by his old leftist minions with about as much reverence as they would look upon "filler" in dog food. McNut is a liberal whore, too self-absorbed in himself and basking in the precious media spotlight to recognize or accept that the loony left has kicked him to the curb for a real socialist. Harry Truman once supposedly said that given the choice, Democrats will vote for another Democrat rather than a Republican who just sounds like a Democrat. Yes, even radical liberals can detect a Republican phony, and they feel about as little connection to one as the most hardened prison inmate feels to a child molester. Even liberals and felons (when actually separate entities) have some degree of a code of honor.

My own personal political experience with the Republican Party in two distant locations in my state has consistently taught me that problems such as leaks of sensitive information and covert collaborating with the other side is not only prevalent, but is always traceable, when traceable at all, to the wishy-washy so-called "moderates." These people are either too weak to respect the line with their Democrat friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members, or are just downright disloyal and just out for themselves. In either case, they are by definition, not trustworthy. They have no confident core values, or they lack the desire or strength to stand by them and face the fire. If actions do speak louder than words, than the uniformly entrenched impotence of the fledgling Republican Party in all the northeast and west coast states screams to the mountaintops.

McNut, Inc. is trying to blame Sarah for their abysmal candidate, and the abysmal campaign that he and they ran. McNut's subordinates haven't learned their lesson yet either. You can throw crap at the wall, but that doesn't mean it will stick. McNut's campaign was about as exciting as white bread and to the extent it had any sustenance or vibrancy, it was fibrillating on life support at best. Then along came Sarah. Look at the crowds, the size of the crowds, and the passion of the crowds for her appearances in comparison to those in attendance to hear McNut once again call them "friends" for the 12, 345th time in a week. There is the difference. People can detect a real person from a used car salesman. Red meat, core principles excite and connect people. It gives them something to hold on to, something to believe in, something to cherish, and a reason to fight on in the good fight no matter what. Moderates just don't get that, and they never will. McNut, Inc. should bend down and kiss Sarah's um...ring for the votes that they did get, because without her on the ticket, the thrashing Obie & Co. gave them would have been far worse. People can get vanilla ice cream anywhere, but how many people actually seek it? If nothing else, voters (outside of Chicago and with a pulse) want pizzazz, not pabulum from their politicians. In trying to be everything to everybody, an impossibility anyway, those who try wind up being less of anything to both sides. It's like trying to put a 1-inch square patch over a 3-inch square hole in a pair of pants. Stretching the fabric won't change the inevitable outcome. Sarah drew larger and more excited crowds because she inspired them. They shared something with her. They were in it together. She was one of them, and they were like her. For all our Pollyanna-like discourse about the wonders of diversity, it's all horseradish. Since attaining more civil rights, which they rightly should have had all along anyway, blacks only took that opportunity to manufacture reverse discrimination and now voluntarily isolate and segregate themselves in black-only organizations and institutions. Why? Because deep down, while most people don't mind different people, we still like commonality, which is why ethnic neighborhoods have always existed in our bigger cities since immigrants arrived here, and who is to say that is a necessarily bad thing? In the same kind of way, nobody with true beliefs wants to hear luke warm John McNut calling them "friends" and droning on about a bunch of issues that they detest and are getting forced to accept. But with Sarah, they sense that they are on the same page. McNut, Inc. doesn't just despise Sarah Palin, they fear her. At its crux, the battle is about liberalism vs. conservatism, and advanced by a bunch of chameleon cowards who refuse to come out of the liberal closet to show their true stripes. These typical haughty, liberal elitist, wannabe-Democrats in Republican clothing aren't by nature nice people, and they don't deal with second place real well. At two different times, from two different people, and in two different places, I heard very negative reports about the attitude and demeanor of McNut's campaign staff at the same event held in New Hampshire earlier this year, and how they paled in comparison to the inner circle members of Ron Paul's campaign, who were also present. The descriptions fit to a "T." Suffice to say, I was not at all surprised.

Forgive me for repeating a corny phrase often expressed by Rush Limbaugh, but it is nevertheless true, "Conservatism works." Names like Rockefeller, Ford, Bush (#41), and Dole never excited the GOP base much, or for long. Names like Goldwater (who was actually more of a small 'l' libertarian), Reagan, and Bush (#43) have fired up the base like a lit match to an open can of gasoline. (Nixon's fame I never quite understood, but some of the base had reservations, and deservedly so, of him as well.) Enter now, Sarah Palin, and she is upsetting the whole northeast and west coast blue-blood, country club, Rockefeller "RINO" ("Republican In Name Only") apple cart. I grew up in a Democrat household and in a Democrat stronghold of a city. More often than not, I heard the semi-true claim that "Republicans are all about money." It was not until much later in life that I realized that the northeast Democrats who say that are basing that opinion on their provincial perception of northeast Republicans, who are equally as liberal on social issues and financially greedy, and yes, are often financially well off, and are obsessed with money matters and don't give a damn about any of the rest. These are not the real Republicans in America's beloved heartland, and specifically in such places as the Midwest, the south, the Rocky Mountain states, and yes, Alaska.

The minority of what I call "fringe" Republicans, inferring to both their limited ideology and geographical location on the US map, invaded our party. They haven't figured out that we don't need them, don't want them, and contrary to what they preach, we don't owe them a damn thing, other than the loss of the Congress and Oval Office respectively in 2006 and 2008. in short, they contribute next to nothing, and are typically haughty, whiny, ungrateful and generally annoying. They are their own little party within a party, and like all other cockroaches, they squint and run when the light is turned on and they become visible for what they really are. Sarah Palin is that light.

The only good that can possibly come out of this whole Democrat takeover is what I and some others have previously espoused, that with any luck and given our history, the pendulum may swing back once the Obie & The Dems inevitably overreach and royally screw everything up. As Barbara Olson said at the 2001 CPAC that I attended, ironically, just a few short months before her tragic death on September 11th, "Friction causes change." Barbara brought a room of roughly 3,000-4,000 attendees, including yours truly, proudly to their feet with a raucous standing ovation. She was referring to, of course at that time, the recent White House transition from Clinton to Bush. In a recent column in his American Conservative magazine, Pat Buchanan predicted that with amnesty for our 12-20 million illegal aliens (which would realistically occur in either a McNut or an Obie administration), the GOP will probably lose the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada by the 2012 election and forever after, as they have also lost California forever, and for the same reason. Buchanan cites that like in Texas (still, for reasons that mystify me, a red state), in California, whites of European descent are already minorities, and as he wrote in his book, "Day of Reckoning," literally 20%, or 1/5 of Mexico's total population is already now here in the US. Assuming the pendulum does swing back, (If it does, it will be because of the new socialist mindset. Then again, if it doesn't, it will also be because of the new socialist mindset!) the GOP's fight in these southwestern and once predominantly red states, will be uphill at best, and possibly even in another language. That fight cannot be won by the proven dysfunction of so-called "moderate" Republicanism. The Republican Party is, theoretically anyway, a conservative party. As the saying rightly goes, the only things usually found "in the middle of the road" are long, yellow streaks and dead skunks. More succinctly, and as I always say, "When you don't stand for anything, you stand for nothing." If the pendulum does swing back, it must be a true conservative, by whatever name, who is waiting in the wings to take hold of it.

Of course, I would be remiss to not give the obligatory disclaimer that John McCain's brave and selfless sacrifice to his country during his service in the Navy was of the most commendable high honor. But much has changed since then, as it once did with a certain other famous, brave, accomplished and noble patriot and warrior named Benedict Arnold. McCain has since sold out the country he once so magnanimously sacrificed for. Being a traitor to the Republican Party is only the least of it. Some of the causes that he has so proudly championed are in direct defiance to the very same US Constitution that he once so gallantly defended. I would really like to know when and why the United States Constitution was transformed from a worthy cause to a speed bump in the ambitious life of John McCain. By his active membership in the anti-American, anti-sovereignty, anti-liberty, globalist, one-world-order group, the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as his recent embrace of socialism to our country's detriment during our economic crisis, an accusation he hypocritically lodged at Obama (who also deserved it), the former warrior, John McCain was a hero, but is now very much a traitor. The only real bitter pill that came from his much-deserved election loss for us is that it gave us Obama instead, who is even worse. Another old war horse who read far too much of his own press and was thus also a legend in his own mind, General Douglas Macarthur, once famously said, "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

You had your chance (again), and you lost (again). You've worn out your usefulness. So, fade away, Johnny. And take your empty suit, "moderate" campaign "friends" with you. We don't want to see any semblance of your so-called "Straight Talk Express," ever again, except for maybe those environmentally friendly diesel exhaust fumes as it departs with you and your motley crew aboard. (And as much as it will undoubtedly pain you, please do remind the driver to keep "right" of the center median!)

As for the rest of us, we'll be spending at least the next four years (and hopefully not eight) trying to repair the damage that you started while we also prepare to thwart what your fellow "socialist," Obie, is trying to finish. And we just might even lead that effort to save our endangered country with a certain Wasilla hockey-Mom named "Sarah," and we couldn't care less if you and your compromising cronies of pseudo-Communism approve or not.

Now, good riddance to the lot of you.

Doug Wrenn