This post guest blogged by Jerry Curtis. Jerry is a retired U.S. Navy officer, former Economic Development Analyst, ex-community college vocational education adviser, and erstwhile computer office software instructor.

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I am a Conservative Republican, and I did not vote for John McCain. I did not vote for Barack Obama either; I left the top part of the ballot blank. However, I did not vote for John McCain, because John McCain is not a Conservative Republican, despite his somewhat cynical choice of Sarah Palin (aka: Caribou Barbie) as his running mate, who turned out to be just a tad less intelligent than Dan Quayle.

Here are the top ten reasons (in no particular order) that I abstained from voting for John McCain:

1. He would have been 72 at the time he took office. Also, I have noticed a disturbing tendency in McCain's past towards volatility, impatience and stubborn petulance when dealing with hostile reporters. I have always had the disquieting feeling that McCain has never quite gotten over his prisoner of war experience and may have issues there.

2. He is a US Senator. Senators don't lead. They deliberate and vote endlessly. They aren't executives and they seem to have a tendency towards laziness.

3. He has slightly less charisma and the rhetorical style of Bob Dole. He would be a continuation of George Bush's "deer-in-the-headlights" and tongue-tied persona that embarrassed the heck out of us Republicans.

4. His energy policy is almost the same as Democrats, who don't believe in drilling for our own oil and who would cripple our coal industry with their absurd "cap and trade" emissions approach.

5. He was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were "tax cuts for the rich." That is not what Conservative Republicans do. To make it worse, he bragged about it.

6. He refused to attack Obama's relation with Jeremiah Wright. Reverend Wright was Barack Obama's mentor for 20 years. McCain's refusal to bring that flaw to the voters' attention showed a political weakness that Democrats did not display with their egregious sexist attacks against Sarah Palin.

7. He personally attacked spokesmen for the Religious Right (e.g., Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson). Those attacks cost him primary votes in 2000, and he didn't repeat those mistakes in 2008. However, he has never made any conciliatory gestures to his base, other than latching on to Sarah Palin, which was a transparently cynical move that even Republicans saw through.

8. He personally attacked the Swift Boat Veterans who exposed John Kerry's ridiculous attempts to take advantage of the Vietnam war medals that Kerry threw into a pile during an anti-war demonstration.

9. His stand on protecting our country's borders against illegal entry has been tepid and weak. He supports granting amnesty to another batch of millions, and that didn't work 20 years ago, either.

10. His stand on eliciting intelligence from captured terrorists, was, in light of his own prisoner of war experience, understandable. However, he seemed to compare his experience in Hanoi with those well-fed and well-treated terrorist enemies of our country. That, to me, seemed a tad...er...unbalanced.

So there are my top ten reasons that I did not vote for John McCain. Did I mention that he is not a Conservative Republican and that "moderates" and "mavericks" go the way of Bob Dole and George McGovern?