Catherine,

I can’t speak for Rick Ballard, but…

The security mom’s are theoretically fickle and prone to change based upon last input received

I’ve been pondering this “secutity moms” thing. Whether or not mothers concerned with the security of their children are “fickle” is something I can’t comment on, but I got a recent example of how a mother, my mother, can change.

My mom would not be a very likely Kerry voter but the Iraq war seemed to be bothering her a great deal wrt Bush. I couldn’t figure out what in particular was bothering her. Her concern didn’t seem to be based upon any good understanding of whether or not it was the right thing to do or not. She just couldn’t figure that out to her satisfaction. Eventually I came to realize that what was bothering her was that people’s sons and daughter’s, husbands and wives, were dying there and it was bringing back, far to sharply, her memories of – I hate to use the word, but – Vietnam when an interminable war kept on keeping on as her son – your’s truly – kept on getting closer and closer to draft and fighting age. I had no idea how this had played upon her then or how it was playing upon her recently.

She was willing to consider Kerry because he might “get us out”.

But she’s apparently come to the conclusion, or at least the recent and possibly temporary change, that Kerry is more dangerous because he won’t defend America’s Children. Somehow she came to grips with the fact that sending some to die now is better than pretending it won’t need to be done later.

The switch seems to have come about from watching both conventions as much as anyone who is not a political junkie could suffer through, listening to the candidates, and then Beslar and the realization, which apparently has faded for a lot of people, that the Islamomurderers want to kill people and we are among the people they want to kill.

I suspect that Kerry’s campaign is coming off as the strident pissing and moaning and negativity. Somebody needs to lead and people are figuring out that Kerry is not up to it.