Sen. John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his Vice Presidential running mate has completely changed the dynamics of the November election. Prior to that selection, McCain’s best chance of winning the presidency was to make Sen. Obama the issue and convince the American people that Barack Obama was not up to the job of being President of the United States. It would be essentially a negative campaign similar to the one that Richard Nixon ran in 1972 which marginalized George McGovern as someone too far to the Left politically and outside the mainstream of American opinion. Nixon won that year, but he didn’t have much in the way of coattails when it came electing more Republicans to Congress in 1972.

The fear this election cycle among Republican leaders was that the conservative base was so demoralized after the Republican failure to effectively govern at the national level in the post-Reagan period of American politics that, while they might get out and vote for John McCain in November, it would be without much enthusiasm. Moreover, there has been very little evidence that the conservatives were energized to work hard to elect Republicans up and down the ticket in November. In contrast, the liberal Democrats have been working hard this year to take back the White House and expand their control of both houses of Congress.

John McCain’s first presidential decision was a bold one. He picked an authentic social and economic conservative in Sarah Palin who has dared to take on the power brokers in her own party in Alaska. Gov. Palin is a conservative reformer with middle class roots and values. She represents a return to what our party stood for during the Goldwater-Reagan eras of Republican politics. As Barry Goldwater put it, “I intend to represent the middle class taxpayers who don’t have a lobbyist in Washington and aren’t looking for a loophole in the law.”

That’s the kind of conservative politician Sarah Palin is.

The problem for John McCain among Conservatives was that he has been in Washington for so long that he seemed to have forsaken his conservative roots. People tend to forget that John McCain started out as a Reagan conservative when he first was elected to Congress in 1982.  I can attest to his views at the time since I worked with him on our Vietnam Veterans initiative as a Director of a federal agency in the Reagan Administration. Congressman John McCain was a very articulate spokesman for conservatism back then.

A lot has happened to the Republican party since the Reagan days as it has drifted away from its bedrock, conservative principles. Perhaps, John McCain is returning to his conservative roots now that he is running for President. If so, he sure got conservatives enthusiastic again by his selection of a true conservative to be his running mate in November. That decision excited conservatives who have been looking for a signal from our nominee that he is one of us and will govern as a conservative.

This is a tough year for any Republican to win the presidency but this conservative believes that John McCain helped his changes substantially by picking Gov. Palin to run on his ticket.

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