Real Men Won't Vote for the Obamessiah

Lou Aguilar at National Review tells us why:

1. Barack Obama spent 20 years sitting in church while his preacher and others bad-mouthed the United States of America. Navy pilot John McCain spent five years being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, and refused a chance to walk out ahead of fellow POWs with more seniority.

2. Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground or future consequences. McCain took on the president and secretary of defense in demanding more troops for Iraq, a policy that is inarguably winning the war. He also has two sons who fought in Iraq.

3. McCain supports nuclear power. Obama backs wind energy.

4. Obama wants restrictive gun control because only economically depressed middle-Americans “cling to God and guns.” McCain unwaveringly supports the Second Amendment.

5. McCain has deviated from his party’s conservative base on several occasions (McCain-Feingold Bill, Gang of 14, McCain-Kennedy Bill, opposition to torture). Obama has voted the left-wing line every single time, and been designated the most liberal Senator in Congress.

6. Obama is willing to meet with hostile state leaders like Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without preconditions. McCain will set conditions first, talk later — maybe.

7. Obama is married to a bitter, angry lawyer who became “proud” of her country for the first time this year. McCain’s wife is a beer heiress who founded an organization to provide MASH-style units to disaster-torn world regions. Did I mention that she’s a beer heiress?

8. Obama supports higher taxes for a government-run nanny state that will coddle all Americans like babies. McCain trusts people to spend their less-taxed money however they wish.

9. The name John McCain sounds like “John McClain,” the action hero played by Bruce Willis in the manly Die Hard series. “Barack Obama” sounds like the kind of elitist villain John McClain has to outwit and defeat.

10. McCain is endorsed by Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Obama gets support from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and every weenie in Hollywood. Plus, Susan Sarandon has vowed to leave the country if McCain gets elected. Case closed.

Peter Kirsanow at The Corner expands on Aguilar's theme:

Lou Aguilar's column today listing the top ten reasons real men vote for McCain hits a problematic vein for Obama. A distillation of Aguilar's reasons points to one of the fundamental reservations many voters have with Obama — that he projects weakness; not the vacillating, flip flopping weakness of your garden variety politician, but the screaming, flashing, neon light on the forehead weakness that's an enticement to bad guys around the world. It's why he polls so poorly on security issues.

The perception isn't just limited to "real men". Everyone has a tendency to size someone up at the initial encounter, whether it's before a sporting event, a business meeting, a high school debate or a labor negotiation. When someone concludes that his adversary is weak it often fuels one's aggressive instincts. In everyday encounters the results may be unfortunate. On the world stage they can be disastrous or nearly so—Kennedy/Khrushchev, Carter /Brezhnev, Cater/Khomeini being just a few examples.

Obama's statements, attitude and demeanor as well as his policies suggest a weakness not seen in a presidential nominee in generations— at least since Adlai Stevenson. Even when Obama tries to talk tough it sounds either silly or plaintive.

It may say something unflattering about human nature but everybody gets it. However unsophisticated, it's as basic as this: any ten year-old kid in my neighborhood in inner-city Cleveland would prefer that Hillary Clinton escort them to the corner Seven Eleven than Barack Obama.

I'll add one to Aguilar's list. Obama's supporters are immature. We see it constantly with the petty name-calling and junior high school antics such as this. They're not serious people, and this time we live in calls for serious people.