It always bothers me that people who have gone to the trouble of doing You Tube or ask me to go to conventions will think I am not doing it for lack of enthusiasm. Please understand that I am on disability for a very strange reason. It is not because I had a good lawyer, it is not because I have political connections.

It is because I am disabled.

These days this is such an odd reason to draw disability pay that I thought it needed mentioning.

It is especially hard for me to listen to speeches, because I wrote so many. In fact, I had to write speeches from a moderate and a liberal point of view. Often on a procedural or constitutional point, the far left and the far right would come together against the middle, and of course I worked for moderate Republicans on the Committee.

At least once I was ordered to write a speech for a liberal senator and was amazed to find that his staff had handed it to him and it appeared in the Record verbatim as I wrote it.

My old circuit riding grandfather taught us that a sermon has to be at least ninety-five percent what people already know. If you give a speech, I know ninety percent of THAT. And I LISTEN, because for decades I had to listen to every word because I was bored sick, and the part I might not hear was crucial.

Two nervous breakdowns and two heart attacks later, I much prefer a dentist to a speech.

So please don’t feel cheated if I haven’t looked at your You Tube or even White Rabbit’s hard work and, more important, hard thought. He keeps me up personally with what he is doing and, more important, his strategy.

Because while I may let you down by not listening to your speeches, you can just go to General Comments 5 and see that others do.

General Comments 5 and the White Rabbit are like the cavalry coming in when the Indians just about have you. I spent years passing the baton off and despairing that anyone would be there to take it, and it is getting to the point where I don’t have a choice.

I cannot overstate how wonderful it feels to be able to sit back and watch the fresh ones pour in and attack the Indians in the pass I have held so long.

The only difference is this war is infinitely more important than any Indian fight.