Well, Senator Harry Reid hasn’t been in the news much lately, but he said that his “becoming president ‘sends a cold chill down my spine,’“ quote unquote. “Reid made his remarks Tuesday outside the Senate chambers when a reporter asked him about McCain… Pulling out his wallet and removing a white piece of paper, Reid told the reporter: ‘All I have to say about that is this. I have it right here, and you can put it in your little recording devices.’

“Then, reading aloud, and quoting Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) from an interview last Friday, Reid said: ‘The thought of him [McCain] being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me.'” Senator Reid basically is siding with Thad Cochran. He “then placed the piece of paper back in his wallet and continued taking reporter’s questions.”

Mr. Brooks’ theory is we, conservatives, hate these other guys. We hate the liberals and consider them the enemy.

Hell, we would love for Mr. McCain to work with us the way he works with the liberals on the left — or, if not work with us, at least stop undermining us.

It’s just that simple.

Let me try this — feel free to disagree, as always.

I’m not putting people down with this. I love people. I want the best for people. I want people to understand the potential that is theirs. I want people to understand the opportunity this country provides. I don’t want people sitting around wishing for things. I want people motivated and desirous to do things, because that’s how you realize success.

That’s how you realize your potential. That’s how you learn you’ve got more potential than you even knew — in trying something. If you sit around hoping for it all day, it might sustain you for a while, but — see, none of us can predict the outcomes in our lives, and so many of us use hope as a bridge to the eventual outcome we hope for from event to event or circumstance to circumstance.

In my understanding, and in my experience, my hoping for something never made it happen. My desire for something did. I think hope — let’s look at liberals, and all these people that are fooling themselves with all this flowery, hopeful talk of a brilliant utopian future from Mr. Obama.

That hope, as exhibited by liberal Democrats, is nothing more than an excuse for not trying.

You sit around and hope something happens, whatever it is. You can apply this to anything. See, folks, what I know from my own experiences is that I cannot predict the future, and I don’t sit around hoping for outcomes. Now, people mistakenly place hope as the sentiment or the emotional state that will lead to the outcome of things, “Oh, gosh I really so hope this happens.” But that’s basically an excuse for not doing anything, for not trying, and so what you’re doing is you’re setting yourself up to have to deal with whatever happens, probably negatively, because you’re not allowing yourself to be part of the equation to get the result that you want.

Faith, to me, is a far better thing to have than hope.

Let me illustrate it in the political sense. A lot of people are hoping that Senator McCain will beat Senator Clinton, and that’s the sole reason that they are supporting Senator McCain, because for whatever reason, they so dislike or are so afraid of Mrs. Clinton, and they think, they hope McCain can beat her. I have very little faith that he can.I’m not hoping he loses. I’m not hoping she loses. I’m looking at the circumstances.

I don’t have much faith that he can beat her, for the reasons that we’ve been into throughout this Blog. Desire, on the other hand, is the equivalent of action in all of this. Hope equals no action. Faith is preferable to hope because faith at least has an optimistic aspect to it. Your religious faith is optimistic. It’s an eternal life. It is all of the things that you think your devotion and your worship will bring you.

That’s optimism.

Hope is simply sitting around, taking yourself out of the equation, subjecting yourself to circumstances that you can’t control, admitting that you can’t or don’t want to have any influence on. You’re basically excusing yourself for not trying. You’re hoping.

You ever heard the phrase “hope against hope”? It means it’s not going to get you anywhere.

Desire, however, is what leads to action.

So if you want Mrs. Clinton to be beat, if you want her defeated, then that’s going to lead you to a different thought process and action process and perhaps voting process than simply sitting around hoping so, because by hoping, you’re placing the responsibility in somebody else’s back pocket, in this case Senator McCain’s.

Now, that’s where I have no faith that what you hope for is going to happen.

Another illustration; In this country, you look at our population, you could say that maybe 10%, 15% of the people are pulling the cart, and 85%, 80% are riding in the cart. The 15% to 20% pulling the cart haven’t got time for hope. They know where they’re going. They have a specific objective. They have specific goals. They have specific purposes and places they want to end up. The people being pulled in the cart are hoping they end up in a good place, but they’re not leading anybody there.

Now, don’t misunderstand. Hope is not invalid. It’s something we all experience. It’s an emotion that we all feel, and a lot of us invest in it.

I try not to hope too much, because to me it equals inaction. I believe things get done when I apply myself to them, not when I sit around and hope that they get done.

“What’s hope ever accomplished?” Did Bill Gates hope when he was in school that he’d find the secrecy to the MS-DOS system getting on every computer, or did he go do it?

We know a little bit more here about what happened in West Virginia — and, folks, it underscores what many of us have been saying about collusion between the Huck forces and McCain forces.

After the first round of balloting in the West Virginia caucus, nobody got 50%, but Romney led with 41%. Paul was out of it. So it was Romney, it was Huckabee, and then McCain, in that order. What has happened is that McCain forces have joined Huck forces, and that’s how Huckabee has won West Virginia.

Now, McCain and Huck forces are denying that there was collusion. But who cares? It doesn’t matter what they say. The fact — what this proves — is that a vote for Huck is a vote for McCain. Because the Huck forces, whether by request from McCain forces or whether on their own, McCain team decided to throw in with the Huck team. So the combination of McCain forces and Huck forces overwhelm Romney, who had 41%.

Nice back room – behind close door – politics for the straight talk express…

So a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain.

Fox News yesterday kind of tricked Hillary and McCain. They had them both on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, and the idea was that they would both be on separately.

After Hillary finished, they asked Hillary to stay there and stay connected so she could hear what McCain said. They kept her microphone live. After McCain finished, she and McCain were asked if they’d like to speak to each other.

They had no choice; they did speak to each other and very civil about it.

Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters said that the McCain camp was not particularly happy about this (properly so) because “Part of the conservative complaint against McCain is his deference to Democrats while treating conservatives much more harshly. That got put on full display yesterday, as the two exchanged not just pleasantries but assurances that a general-election contest between the two would be ‘respectful.’ Republicans may want someone less inclined to put the gloves on against Hillary than taking them off against fellow Republicans.”

Morrissey is exactly right here.

McCain is far friendlier to his enemies, the people that are going to try to bury him, than he is to… well, he’s making friends with his enemies, let’s just put it that way.

Here’s the bottom line, and Ed is exactly right about this.

“Hillary hasn’t got Democrats wondering if the Clintons can fight hard enough against Republicans.” The Democrats know that either one of their candidates — Hillary or Obama — are going to take it to McCain and us. But we on the Republican side do have a concern about how hard Senator McCain will go out and fight these people, since he wants to adopt their ideas since they’re “poll[ing] better”.

Side notes:

• McCain-Kennedy: Amnisty bill (Anyone in favor of Sovereignty nation?),
• McCain–Feingold Act – (Screw the first Amendment act),
  
• Gang of 14 (Supreme Court nominations…what the hell was all that about?),
  
• Votes against the Bush Tax cuts (Conservative, my ass.),
• don’t forgetMcCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act (Global Warming Tax on America) and so much more.

Looks to me like a RINO -Republican in Name Only.

Maybe he should run as Hillary’s VP.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.