Opinion: Two California GOP delegates -- excited over McCain, worried about Sarah Palin
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ST. PAUL -- Karen Bonadio is a rare species -- a Republican from Los Angeles.
And as she and her father, Col. Robert A. Bonadio, USMC retired, traveled here for the scheduled Monday opening of the Republican National Convention, both delegates were excited -- and both a little worried.
They were excited by the prospect of naming Sen. John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee, so excited that they donned McCain buttons even before they boarded their flight at LAX so anyone in the airport would know their candidate in case they cared, which they surely must, though no one said anything.
‘He’s a great man,’ they agreed. Karen Bonadio, in fact, changed her voter registration from Decline to State to Republican so she could vote for McCain in the primary.
The pair actually met the senator recently and have a tarmac group photo to show anyone who doesn’t ask to see it. McCain, it seems, was so effectively responsive to Mr. Bonadio’s years-long effort with....
...others to get some back pay owed to U.S. POWs from World War II.
Having himself been a POW for 66 months, McCain drove the measure through Congress. And the former prisoners, the ones who were left anyway, got the pay, albeit in 1942 dollars.
The father-daughter delegate duo was worried, though, not so much about the hurricane with the German name because if Angelenos knew the slightest thing about hurricanes or tornadoes, they sure wouldn’t cover their roofs with all those half-sewer tiles.
They were worried about this VP pick of McCain’s. They’d expected former Gov. Mitt Romney, which means the Bonadios sure didn’t notice the acidic personal chemistry between the two during some GOP debates.
The Bonadios are worried over this Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. They like her story a lot -- star high school athlete, college graduate, part-time fisherperson, tax-cutting mayor, mother of five, fiscal conservative, successful reform fighter against corrupt party bosses, sold off the state jet to fly commercially, drives herself around.
But the Bonadios heard that Palin and her family are hunters, actually going out into the countryside to shoot wild creatures that weren’t doing anything to her. That offends the L.A. delegates greatly, and they really don’t want to hear that different parts of the country may have different cultures and views of such things.
The Bonadios don’t know that they want such a smalltown person as vice president. And they intend to make that point clear this week if they get another chance to talk with the senator.
-- Andrew Malcolm