The candidates who will deliver

Susan Allen
Published: October 4, 2008

By SUSAN ALLEN
As the Chair of Virginia Women for McCain, I am excited to be supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin. More than ever, this has become an election about reform and change: Americans want an end to the partisan politics-as-usual that have stifled calls for reform and given us the most unpopular, unaccomplished Congress in history. For many voters, the critical question is which ticket will deliver on its promises.
For American women who want reform and results, the past 30 days have been a roller-coaster. For the first time, both major political parties had the chance to nominate a strong, accomplished woman to serve as vice president of the United States.  Thankfully, John McCain gave us a chance to shatter the glass-ceiling in Sarah Palin. The McCain-Palin ticket means reform for a broken Washington and stands in stark contrast to their opponents.
For Virginians, the choice is simple. Do we elect Barack Obama, a Senator with a history of extreme partisanship and a liberal record of voting to raise taxes? Do we compound the error by sending Joe Biden, one of the staunchest defenders of financial-services corporations, during this time of economic crisis?
As a Republican, I am proud that we put forward John McCain, a war hero and political maverick with a record of fighting wasteful spending and achieving bipartisan solutions to the toughest problems. He showed his maverick nature by shocking the world when he named a kindred spirit as his running-mate. Sarah Palin, the reform-minded, moose-hunting mother of five has a record of fighting both big oil companies and corruption within her own party. She is a woman who knows we need a person worthy to be commander in chief, because her son, like Senator McCain’s, is now fighting for our freedom as a member of the American military.
When Sarah Palin was nominated, while the Democrats were busy unleashing their mainstream-media attack poodles on her, a rush of events reminded Virginians of the real issues in this election. In Iraq, our soldiers continued their surge strategy that propelled us from the brink of disaster to the brink of both a victory and a homecoming for our troops. Russia invaded the democratic nation of Georgia. Soaring gas prices shattered family budgets and highlighted the need to develop clean, inexpensive, domestic energy sources. The crisis in our mortgage markets spread to the financial-services industries and threatens our entire economy. 
John McCain and Sarah Palin will secure our energy independence and economic opportunity by embracing their “all of the above” energy plan. They believe America should use the resources inside our borders and off shore to prevent hundreds of billions of dollars going to countries that don’t care about America very much.  John McCain and Sarah Palin believe that we should allow Americans to drill for oil while also allowing Virginians to develop clean-coal technologies that could help us exploit Virginia’s coal reserves and then be exported to coal-dependent nations like India and China. Unlike Joe Biden and Barack Obama’s opposition to clean coal, the McCain-Palin team sees American energy and ingenuity as solutions to global problems.
These are all difficult, complex challenges. They will require leaders who have proven that they will cross party lines, challenge entrenched interests and put the needs of this country first. Only John McCain and Sarah Palin have a proven record of focusing — not on pretty words — but on the hard work, creative thinking and bipartisanship that separate good intentions from good results.
Susan Allen is a former first lady of Virginia.She is the wife of wife of former GOP Governor and U.S. Senator George Allen.