Finally!

It's been a long political winter for me.

At a Christmas party I chatted with a gal joining Romney's campaign. I liked his integrity in family values, his experience, his willingness to tackle the healthcare mess. It didn't bother me that he is Mormon - here inside the Beltway anyone on the right side of the culture war is a close friend and ally, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, what have you. But how would his faith play in Peoria? Thinking back to my childhood in the Land of Lincoln, I never imagined I would grow up to count Mormons among my closest friends. What about in Mississippi where my husband lived a couple years? They barely tolerate Catholics, much less Mormons, he tells me. Even worse, my formerly-Mormon, formerly-Southern friend tells me. I hold out, wondering if there is a better champion for the Republican party, though I rue the religious prejudice...

McCain - never an option. I will never forgive him for maiming the essential First Amendment freedom of political speech.

Giuliani - also not an option. A man who is unashamed of cheating on his wife will be unashamed of cheating on the people who elect him. You think this sexual libertine will keep his promise to appoint a "strict constructionist" Supreme Court justice who might overturn Roe v. Wade? Ask his children and you'll get a real answer.

Finally, this spring, the rumors of Fred Thompson began to spread. A number of my friends have drunk the Thompson Kool-Aid. But how can a man affectionately referred to by his friends as a "junkyard dog of Capitol Hill" (referring to his "robust dating life" until he married a tart half his age) be the savior of social conservatives? And why can't he be a man and debate with the others? What's this silly murmuring non-campaign-campaign? Just because he's a TV star doesn't make him the next Ronald Reagan.

Never really looked at the second tier...

Then Ames happened.

I remembered - who ever heard of Bill Clinton outside of Arkansas before 1991? Maybe prior name recognition isn't the be all and end all of a successful campaign. And then the chatter came on National Review, my most essential non-spiritual reading. What they praised about him I praised. What they panned about him, I cheered for his gutsy willingness to stand for what is good policy over party line. And this week, he's leading Thompson in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls. Huckabee's campaign is still a long shot, but now a real chance. A 3-pointer, but not a half-court toss.

In 1992, I was just barely too young to vote, and lost my political innocence as a "Reagan baby" as I watched this sleazy guy no one had heard of 18 months earlier win the Presidency of the United States. But it's a new day in America. This year my hope is the new man from Hope!