In her commentary on Oct. 4, Paula Cracas asked who could be voting for John McCain? Here are some of the people I believe are voting for McCain:

Veterans who recognize McCain as one of them, a true war hero who understands the military and will see that the war in Iraq is won and the troops come home in honor.

According to the Washington Post (Sept. 26, 2008), “As a group, veterans lean Republican, and a Washington Post-ABC News poll in late August showed McCain leading Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent among them.” This is contrary to Cracas’ claim that McCain has a very low rating with veterans’ groups.  Senior citizens, who are not depending solely on Social Security for their retirement income because they realized it was unreliable and were smart enough to save for their retirement in other ways, support McCain.

McCain spoke the truth when he said at a forum in 2007 that “The dirty secret in America today is that Medicare and Social Security are going broke. They’re going broke and they’re not going to be there for future generations of young Americans, and we owe them the responsibility to make hard choices now.”

Pro-lifers, who know life begins at conception and would welcome the elimination of Roe vs. Wade, support McCain. Mothers, who don’t believe government should mandate sex education in school and mothers who would prefer to teach their young children how to read and write at home instead of sending them off to Head Start or other pre-schools, support McCain. Investors, who know that deregulation was not the reason for the current financial meltdown, and that the real reason was the Democrats in Congress and Democratic presidents who, through new regulations, forced lenders to lower their requirements for borrowers and make risky subprime mortgages to them, support McCain.  Workers, who realize that one of the keys to prosperity is lower and fewer taxes, not an ever increasing minimum wage, support McCain. 

Finally, there are those who are voting for McCain because of his brilliant choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a woman who is pro-life, pro-Second Amendment rights, and with executive experience, which none of the other candidates have. It is plain that the level of enthusiasm for McCain shot up as soon as he named Palin his vice president, and together they have drawn crowds at rallies that are even bigger than Obama’s. At a recent rally in Richmond, Va., Palin alone drew a crowd of about 20,000 people.

Caroline Monroe

Coos Bay