What McCain "didn't" say might give us President Obama

Here's an awesome article from Mary Kochan at Catholic Exchange today --
http://catholicexchange.com/2008/10/20/114197/

In case you have trouble with the link, here are some highlights --

Why is it that with all the terrific conservative writers and speakers in this county, conservatives cannot seem to field a single national figure since Reagan who could string together a coherent, sustained argument for conservative principles? Or forget a coherent, sustained argument. I’d settle for single coherent sentence.

During the Republican convention it seemed like Sarah Palin might be able to do so. She seemed to have some wittiness about her. Take for example: “You know what a small town mayor is? That’s a community organizer with real responsibilities.” That was a great line. It was memorable and it skewered Obama. It was also 7 weeks ago. During the Civil Forum with Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, John McCain seemed able. Remember how he spit out, “At conception” before Warren had even finished asking “When does human life begin?” That was 9 weeks ago.

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Imagine how the debates would have gone if, when Obama started his 95% mantra, McCain had answered, “Senator Obama is having a bad math day. You can’t give 95% of Americans a tax break when 30% of them don’t pay any income taxes.” Or imagine if McCain had said, “Corporations don’t pay taxes, Senator Obama. A corporation only has three basic accounting categories. It has costs, income, and either profit or loss. If its income exceeds its costs, it makes a profit. If its costs exceed its income, it has a loss. And guess what category taxes go under? They go under costs. And you know what happens to corporate costs? They get passed on to consumers. So-called “corporate taxes” are paid by consumers. So what you are proposing is not really a tax break, Senator Obama; what you are proposing is to raise the costs of everything that people buy from American companies both here and abroad. Not only will you make American companies less competitive globally, you plan to hide your real tax increase on all Americans under the increased cost of all their goods and services while pretending to decrease their taxes. We already went through this experience of spiraling inflation under Democrat Jimmy Carter and we have no desire to repeat it. Thank you very much, anyway.”

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As with economic issues, the Republican nominees have completely failed clearly to connect their platform with the real feelings of Americans about abortion and they fail to answer the repeated lies that come from the other side. Take the final debate. It was already unconscionable that McCain had let two debates go by without speaking to this issue, regardless of the format. You either find the slaughter of 4000 American babies a day worthy of the riveted attention of the country or you don’t. But if you were going to wait until the last debate to finally open your mouth in defense of the unborn, certainly the weeks that had gone by were enough time to prepare something striking to say. Certainly we have heard ad nauseam the rhetoric of the pro-aborts and there weren’t going to be any big surprises. Certainly by now McCain and his team of advisors and writers have had time to come up with some memorable rejoinders.

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Imagine if, when Barack Obama said that he would support laws restricting abortion as long they had an exception for the health of the mother, John McCain had said: “Get your facts straight, Senator. No operation to save a mother’s life was ever illegal. Doctors were always free to do anything necessary to protect the health of the mother, even if their actions indirectly took the life of the unborn infant. That was true before Roe v. Wade and it is true now and it would be true after Roe v. Wade is rightly overturned. Abortion is about the direct and intentional killing of babies. It is not health care.”

Americans have repeatedly voted to restrict abortion and you and your party have used judicial tyranny to overturn the will of the people in this matter time and again. And you have promised Planned Parenthood that you and your Democrat cohorts in congress will make it the first priority of your administration to undo every single restriction on abortion that has been voted into law across this county, whether it be parental notification, not allowing tax dollars to be used for abortion, waiting periods, informed consent laws, conscience clauses allowing doctors the right not to participate in abortions, and restrictions on using foreign aid to promote forced abortions in other countries. That’s the promise you made but that you are trying to keep secret from the American people, Senator.” McCain called Obama a “pro-abortion politician,” but he did not explain why that was true.

Imagine if, when Barack Obama had said that he believed in “privacy” and that a woman and her doctor and her family should make the abortion decision, McCain had said: “Privacy is fine when you are making a decision that does not involve another human being. Why don’t we let families get with their accountant and privately decide if owning a slave would be in their financial best interests? It is because the person they are thinking of owning as a slave has a right to his own life and freedom. The privacy argument does not hold water, Senator, because the baby that they are ‘privately’ deciding to kill is a human person with his own right to life. And it was as unjust for the Supreme Court of this country ever to deny the protection of the law to the lives of slaves, as it is unjust of the Supreme Court to deny the protection of law to lives of the unborn. Every innocent person, born or unborn, deserves the protection of the law.”