Day 3: David sees Arianna, Fred Thompson

From Waxhaw teen David McKee, who is at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul with the Junior Statesmen of America program:

In our speakers' program Tuesday we heard from Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. She spoke about the Huffington Post and her view of politics. She said that they ask their writers and reporters to be very transparent about their political views. I thought she was a very respectable woman. She spoke with a lot of dignity and professionalism.

Tuesday afternoon I went to Ron Paul's alternative convention, the "Rally for America". There were a lot more people there than I would have expected. Tucker Carlson from MSNBC spoke. There were several other speakers as well. In general the Libertarians want lower taxes. And they said that there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans because all both of those parties want is to raise taxes and make our government go bankrupt. They also want to abolish the Federal Reserve. It's their belief that the Federal Reserve caused the housing bubble, and all economic bubbles. They said that the Green Tech is a coming bubble. I don't see how this is true. How could the Fed be causing bubbles? I just don't see how.

I felt that the Rally for America wasn't pulled together well. The announcer wasn't that good. They didn't spend much money on anything, and there were a lot of advertisements. Ads for law firms, Ads for Ron Paul's constitutional pamphlet, Ads for "USA Tomorrow". It just didn't feel all that pulled together. Of course, Ron Paul doesn't have the money to spend on something like this the way that the Republican Party does. It did feel like a sincere attempt on the Libertarians' part.

Wednesday night, we were at the Republican Convention for all the speakers. Fred Thompson attacked Obama and praised Sarah Palin as McCain's Vice Presidential pick. I think that McCain is taking the biggest gamble of his career by choosing Palin. She is under investigation, has a daughter not much older than me who is pregnant and all this is coming out just in the first week after her selection. It may end up that lots of things on her resume are invalidated. It raises suspicion if she could be a good President if she ever needed to be.

Her choice as VP was made to help the Republican Party. To appeal to the masses, he could have picked an Independent like Joe Lieberman. Palin's stance on many things does not appeal to the mainstream in this country. For example, I think that teaching creationism in the schools is kind of scary. Because it's forcing one religion onto a whole county, which would violate the First Amendment, which guarantees us the freedom of religion.

It's interesting to see that the Republicans unify behind their candidate but then there are flashes of guns and steel in their eyes while they praise them. It seems as if there might be lots of political back stabbing behind the scenes. Yes they look unified to the American people, but when the wool is pulled over your eyes everything looks good.