Mike McCallister is running for US Senate in the State of Florida in 2012. He is an early favorite of tea partiers – probably because no other Republican has declared yet. He ran a distant third in the Republican primary for governor.
What is startling about Mike is his inability or refusal to communicate his position on national security issues, the sources of the threat, and the role and intent of Islam.
During his campaign kickoff speech on December 6th in a Tea Party meeting he said, and I paraphrase, “… this war was unlike any we've ever fought as it is not against a country, but against a culture of religious fanatics...”
That is substantially all he said about the reason we are fighting two wars and spending hundreds of billions on homeland security. That answer is so vague and broad brush that it could apply to any group of people that political correctness declares to be “fanatics.” Christians who profess belief in and actively promote the Bible as the word of God could be declared “religious fanatics” by secular progressives. Sorry Mike, you are a bit vague in identifying the enemy.
A friend emailed to me a summary of his platform. There was not a word about homeland security or Islam, the ideology we refuse to admit is behind our engagement in a war in two Islamic nations.
In my attempt to fill in the obvious gap of critical information in his platform, I emailed him with this question:
Please describe for me your understanding of Islam, and its threat to the US, if any. Is it historically and currently a “religion of peace” or is it intrinsically a warring, supremacist ideology?
Thanks for your insights.
My name Islamic Threat Committee Tri-County Tea Party, Florida
And his reply…
This I would discuss in person not by email.
And my follow-up, understanding that some folks have an aversion to emails…
Please provide a phone number so we can discuss.
And his reply…
I will at your TeaParty on Dec 6.
[He said very little on the topic at the Tea Party meeting]
And my follow-up, expressing shock at his refusal to answer…
Thank you for your reply.
I am, in fact most of us are, looking for candidates who will speak and WRITE the truth with courage. Initially, not knowing anything about you, I am disappointed that you, for whatever reason, feel you must avoid making your understanding of Islam known in writing. Islam, as an ideology, has forced America to be engaged in two wars, spend billions of dollars on homeland security, and subject our traveling citizens to invasive, humiliating searches. And you don’t want to put your understanding of Islam in an email. Do you not have a position paper on the subject?
He apparently does not. Further email exchanges followed. The stonewalling continued - no answers whatsoever were forthcoming concerning his position on homeland security, national security threats, the role of Islam, or our roles in two wars in Islamic nations. In fact he resorted to pomposity and condescension in lieu of transparency and forthrightness.
He strikes me as an academic in the worst sense, maintaining an air of high-minded superiority above the capacity of common folk to understand or have a need to know. One of his campaign aids even bragged on his behalf that his CV (“Curriculum Vitae” for low life like myself who are ignorant of such acronyms) has 9 pages. Nine! I was so impressed I looked up how many pages of CV Bill Ayers has. He has 34 pages! Wow. On that basis Ayers would make a better Senator than McCallister!
Please, Republicans and conservatives - we do not need a stonewaller on national security issues. Usually stonewallers are ignorant about the issues they are stonewalling. And if not ignorant, they have information they don’t want to share because they think so little of the capacity of their audience to understand what they are saying. So whether McCallister is a stonewaller or an excessively pompous colonel matters not. Neither one would make a good senator. A Col. Allen West he is definitely NOT!
I pray for other conservative options in the coming months.
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