I'll be writing more about Gov. Sarah Palin's remarkable rally Thursday night in Beaver, PA, a few miles from where I live. I have tremendous admiration for the Governor and her wonderful family. I met a number of superb women yesterday, including Alexandra, who was taping a program for HBO and Melissa Hart, a fine candidate for Congress in western PA.

On my Hillary Supporters for McCain blog, which is not long for this world, I'll be talking a great deal this week about the strengths of Sarah Palin and the manifold deficiencies of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Come visit.

Make Calls for John, Sarah

If Pennsylvania is a battleground state -- and it is -- then Beaver County, where I live is Ground Zero. The county has a Democratic edge in registration, but we intend to win it big for John McCain and Sarah Palin.


"We cling to our God . . . and our Children" -- Sarah, Todd, and Trig Palin

Note: It's absolutely critical that all of us reach out to as many people as possible to indicate our support for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Here's how you can do so: Make Phone Calls from Home. . . Reaching out to undecided voters in your state. That's vital to spreading the word that John McCain and Governor Palin are the right choice for voters all across America. That's why we're asking you to take a few minutes or even a free evening to make calls for John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. You can call your local McCain or GOP office and volunteer, or you can phone from home in your spare time. Visit www.JohnMcCain.com/PhoneBank to get started today.

When I've asked people in Beaver County, PA, where I live (yep, we're those God-loving, gun-toting folks that Barack despises), over the phone to volunteer their time for the campaign, they almost never do. When I ask them, face-to-face, how often do they volunteer? So far, always.

At the Beaver, PA GOP headquarters today -- and "Beaver" differs from "Beaver Falls," where Joe Namath grew up, three women volunteered -- Dee Byers, Darlene Cutlip, and Sandra Boyde. Actually, Dee's husband volunteered her, which as a long-time husband myself, I told him could be risky business. Did I sign her up? Of course. "In love, war, and politics, all is fair."

The volunteer I'd like to highlight is Sandra Boyde, who lives near the Ohio line. She mentioned she had converted various relatives, including in-laws, into rabid supporters of McCain-Palin, and she was prepared to do the same with friends and neighbors. She's pretty, smart, and funny.

Then, I heard her talking to the volunteer coordinator ("Kyle," a gal Kyle, not a guy Kyle). She mentioned that she might have trouble doing a lot of door-to-door work because she was undergoing chemotherapy. She told me she had experienced a recurrence of her cancer, which had first surfaced six-and-a-half years before.

Sandra is volunteering to make phone calls to voters, probably a whole lot of calls. She has children who do football and all the other things we wish WE were doing. She's not too tired to reach out to voters, to be an essential part of the ground game. Of great interest to me, she's a great deal like Sarah Palin, a person of real courage -- fearless and even at peace with the hand she's been dealt.

Most people who make calls, offer yard signs, and bang on their neighbor's doors probably don't do so because they're so much fun They do these things because the "other guy" i(Obama) is doing it. If we don't do it better than he, we probably will lose.

If a person like Sandra accepted losses easily, she wouldn't have been in the Beaver, PA, GOP office offering to help. She's NOT sitting around bemoaning her fate. Instead, in a small way, she's making history.

How critical is Beaver County? If PA is a battleground state -- and it is -- then are Ground Zero. There's a Democratic voter registration edge, but there are early signs that we could win big here. Our surveys -- and we're not Gallup -- show McCain could win by two-to-one. The "Sarah Palin Effect" (remember God? remember guns?) is off-the-chart. When Gov. Sarah appears here, as she will, the multitudes will gather.

The Ground Game is more than get-out-the-vote. It's also wake up the voter, and remind him or her that he or she has a big decision to make.

Please join Sandra, Dee, Darlene, and yours truly as volunteers. You may have to be persistent to get the attention of campaign people to guide you in the right direction. You presumably will have to endure the "Great Yard Sign Shortage of 2008."

Sadly, political campaigns are nick-of-time,, hit-and-miss events. They are not well-oiled machines. They are, "Oops, didn't anybody ever put oil in this thing?"

Volunteer on JohnMcCain.com. Call up your local McCain office. If you don't have a local McCain office, create one. If you wait for orders from on high, you may end up waiting unto eternity.

A good step is to call up the local Republican office. If you're a Democrat or Independent, call anyway. Trust me, you will find that Republicans are among the most harmless of God's creature.

Why VOLUNTEERS have to be persistent in volunteering is one of the riddles of the universe. But tough times demand tough people, much like Sandra, whom I met today and who, with her family, will now be friends for life. I don't know exactly what her "stands" are on the "issues." I don't exactly care either.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS AND OTHER ONLINERS: The best thing you can do with the blog columns and thoughtful e-mails you write is to turn them into 200-to-250 word letters to the editor of your LOCAL newspapers. I bet you'll find the the following links will connect you with every newspaper in America -- from Alabama to Wyoming. What about Guam? Well, what about it?

The Conscience of a Conservative

Me, Myself, and I -- very much "at home" in Beaver County, PA

A liberal reader of mine from eastern PA (I live in western PA) wrote me a long, mostly autobiographical e-mail asking why I -- living in a supposedly semi-distressed area of Beaver County -- believed generally in conservative principles. He (?) also asked me if I voted for GWB and Rick Santorum (our former Republican Senator). I replied at length, focusing mainly on why I oppose Obama and support McCain. In case you've been wondering about similar things, here's my reply:

Did I vote for GWB? Only twice. I think highly of him and his family.

Did I support Rick Santorum? I supported him when he ran the first time in 1994 against Harris Wofford, who was a man of extremely limited talents. I voted for him when he ran against Ron Klink (2000), but I always had problems with Santorum as a person. I can support individuals of various views -- I might vote for Specter in the primary and general election -- but I do want to see in any candidate signs of real affection for our diverse and sometimes irritating fellow human beings. Over the years, I started to see less and less of that in Santorum (whom I know but not really well).

Senator Bob Casey: I don't believe he is a honest man. If he's so ardently pro-life, which I don't for a minute think he is, why did he support the most pro-abortion candidate in American history: Barack Obama? This is not an issue of whether you're pro-choice or pro-life, but rather a question of basic honesty. I didn't like the Santorum-Casey choice, and I wasn't at all surprised when the electorate sent Rick on his way. My wife despises Santorum.

I believe most people can rationalize endlessly when it comes to political choices. I don't do a lot of rationalizing. For example, do you believe Rev. Wright's views really came as a surprise to Barack Obama after he spent 20 years listening to Wright's views? If your answer is "no," then of course you would have trouble voting for Obama (although you might do so).

There, I just screwed up any serenity you might have about voting for Obama. (It's what I do.)

Beaver County: I believe its future over the next generation can be very bright. There is good public transportation in the country and back-and-forth from Pittsburgh. The people here are generally wonderful. I have Black neighbors on both sides of our (modest) house -- we live right across from Ambridge H.S. Everything I need (almost) is within walking distance. It surely isn't suburban, affluent, but for our purposes it's a great place to live.

Members of my family, including two daughters, are like the many people who voted in the Primary, and thus opted for Sen. Clinton. I voted for John McCain in the Republican Primary.

The folks here in small-town Beaver County are not the "bitter" people that Obama described as clinging to religion, guns, racism, and xenophobia. (Yes, those are the people whose votes he now covets.) Obama knows nothing about the people in Beaver County or the many similar counties in PA, OH, IN.

His foreign policy adviser (Samantha Power), the one who called Hillary a "monster," also called the people of Ohio (I mean almost all of them) "obsessed." I don't know exactly what she meant, but I think it was a forerunner of the bitter comments.

Generally, I'd call the "race relations" here in this county very good. They are a whole lot better than what exists in Obama's Chicago area, such as Cicero, which MLK described as the worst he ever saw.

Philosophically, my problem with liberalism is that it preaches collective responsibility while denying the existence of individual responsibility. It's a view that makes no sense. How are we to take care of others if we can't take care of ourselves?

People who absolutely can't take care of themselves should receive help from those who can provide it. My wife has been disabled since 1991, but she does a great job of taking care of herself -- with some assistance from me and a daughter and some from Social Security/Medicare.

Many years ago I had a girlfriend in my single days. She told my mother (an artist and writer), "Oh, Mrs. Maloney, Steve and I will always take care of you." My mother said, "C, I think I'd prefer to take care of myself." The girlfriend was something of a legendary Democratic political figure in the Pittsburgh area. We eventually parted ways.

I haven't answered all your questions, but I've tried to be as candid as I can. Of course, I've also been challenging your beliefs, which is the way I conduct my life. As I suggested earlier, several of the members of my immediate family voted either for Mrs. Clinton or Sen. Obama (in various primaries).

The children are a very diverse group, and that's fine with me.

I spend a whole lot of my time "campaigning" (mostly online) for Senator McCain and others in whom I believe. I very much fear an Obama presidency because of his weakness and self-absorption. I read a while back that 20% of Democrats are rooting for the U.S. to lose the war in Iraq. I believe much of Obama's financial support comes from that group -- Moveon.org and Daily Kos types.

I am going to be writing this week about some of the comments in my "Black Conservatives" group. A big issue there is whether Obama's policies would help or hurt the Black community. I may send you one or two of the pieces I'll be using.

Sometimes policies designed to "help" people end up hurting them unintentionally. For example, the welfare policies of the Great Society ended up providing economic incentives for families to splt up. Thus, we now have twice as many single-mother Black families (percentage basis) as we did a generation ago. Obama alluded to this in his Father's Day speech but didn't seem to grasp exactly what had happened.

As bright as he appears sometimes, Obama is generally clueless about his own country.

As for me: To paraphrase Albert Camus' description of Sisyphus, "one must imagine Steve happy." I hope you and yours also are.

Steve Maloney
Ambridge, PA