Dear Senator McCain

I write to you today with a heavy heart and deep disappointment. With each passing day it becomes more and more clear that you are positioning yourself to run for President in 2008. Five or six years ago I would have been thrilled, but today ----- not so much.

It seems to me that all of the qualities that once set you apart from other politicians have pretty much vanished into thin air. I now find myself wondering what happened to the maverick. And I am not the only one.

There have been numerous things over the years that have slowly chiseled away at my admiration for you. And lately, it has gotten too much to bear. Endorsing the teaching of Intelligent Design in our children’s science classes and supporting the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment, two Republican wedge issues designed to whip the extreme religious fringe of your base into a frenzy was just more than I could stomach. But I suppose the last straw for me is your blatant cozying up to someone like Jerry Falwell, a man that you once referred to as an agent of intolerance, but then again, that was back in your maverick years. And now that Mr. Falwell knows he’s got you right where he wants you, he has made it very clear that “You have a lot of fence mending to do.”

Oh Senator McCain, what have you done? Don’t you see that you cannot ever please these religious extremists? They will never be satisfied. And by even trying, you have turned off the very people who once held you in high esteem, the moderates. You are not a maverick anymore, you are just mushy. By abandoning your principles, you have made yourself no different than the other Republican candidates that are eyeing the Presidency. You don’t stand out anymore. It has been a long fall from Hero to Ho Hum.

I know that I am just a Seething Mom and that I have a personal stake in who becomes the next President of the United States, considering my son is slowly being relegated to a second class citizen by the powers-that-be, but could I give you some humble advice? Be true to yourself. Leave the Republican Party, which has become a party of yes men anyway. Run as an Independent and go back to being a maverick. It becomes you.

And let me close with a little refresher. The second definition for Maverick in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.

Sincerely,

Seething Mom