“I Have Never Learned To Fight For My Freedom….”

"…I was only good at enjoying it." Mark Steyn quotes writer Oscar van den Boogaard in his column today. Boogaard said this in an interview where he recognized that Europe was in serious, serious trouble because of the Islamist threat. As Steyn title his column: The "Only choice on war is to win or lose it". If we lose this one, the repercussions are enormous and may prove fatal to freedom.

My caller at C-SPAN thought this Bush farsightedness shtick was ridiculous. And, though I did my best to lower her blood pressure, I can't honestly say I succeeded. But suppose the ''Anyone But Bush'' bumper-sticker set got their way; suppose he and Cheney and Rummy and all the minor supporting warmongers down to yours truly were suddenly vaporized in 20 seconds' time. What then?

Nothing, that's what. The jihad's still there. Kim Jong Il's still there. The Iranian nukes are still there. The slyer Islamist subversion from south-east Asia to the Balkans to northern England goes on, day after day after day. And one morning we'll switch on the TV and the smoke and flames will be on this side of the Atlantic, much to President Rodham's surprise. Bush hatred is silly and parochial and reductive: History is on the march and the anti-Bush crowd is holding the telescope the wrong way round.

"We're in this grand ideological struggle," said the president two days later. "I am in disbelief that people don't take these people seriously." He was sitting in the Oval Office with a handful of columnists including yours truly. At the risk of making that C-SPAN caller's head explode, it was a great honor. I wasn't the only foreigner in the room: There was a bust of Winston Churchill, along with those of Lincoln and Eisenhower. A war president, a war prime minister, a war general.

Bush was forceful and informed, and it seems to me he performs better in small groups of one-night-only White House correspondents than in the leaden electronic vaudeville with Helen Thomas, David Gregory and the other regulars. (You can judge for yourself: Michael Barone has posted the entire audio at U.S. News & World Report's Web site.) He dismissed the idea that going into Iraq had only served to "recruit" more terrorists to the cause. (General Pace told me last week that, if anything, the evidence is that Iraq has tied up a big chunk of senior jihadists who'd otherwise be blowing up Afghanistan and elsewhere.) The president's view is that before it was Iraq it was Israel; with these guys, it's always something. Sometimes it's East Timor — which used to be the leftie cause du jour. And, riffing on the endless list of Islamist grievances, Bush concluded with an exasperated: "If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons." That'd make a great slogan: it encapsulates simultaneously the Islamists' inability to move on millennium-in millennium-out, plus their propensity for instant new "root causes," and their utter lack of proportion.

There is much more at stake than a mid-term election. Defeat in Iraq - and that is exactly what withdrawal would be - will be a victory for the Islamists. One we cannot afford. People better realize that is the case. Contrary to what some of the more obnoxious commenters here believe, I am not pro-war. But I am very much pro-victory once a war begins. That, for me, is not a choice. We had better face up to the fact that we cannot choose defeat, it is not a viable option for this nation or for the world.

Read all of Steyn's column. As always, he is powerful. This one is arguably one of the most important ones he has written.

The Race Card

Jeff Jacoby has a column in today's Boston Globe that rips apart the all-to-frequent use of the race card these days. His point is that this is a weapon that degrades the wielders of it as much as it hurts who it is directed at. It is also demeaning to the voters. He's right.

The 2006 edition of racial McCarthyism features TV ads, too. But this time it is the ads themselves — and by extension the Republicans they are meant to benefit — that are being falsely smeared as racist.

In Tennessee, the GOP aired a commercial poking fun at Harold Ford, the black Memphis congressman who is battling with former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker to succeed Bill Frist in the US Senate.

The ad parodies several of Ford's political positions through mock interviews with people defending or agreeing with him. "Terrorists need their privacy," a woman indignantly insists. "Ford's right," says a hunter , "I do have too many guns." A Wilford Brimley look-alike declares, "Canada can take care of North Korea — they're not busy." And a bare-shouldered bimbo squeals, "I met Harold at the Playboy party" — a reference to Playboy's 2005 Super Bowl bash in Florida, which Ford attended. The ditzy blonde returns at the end to whisper, with a wink, "Harold: call me!"

It was a witty, entertaining ad — and it promptly had liberals and Democrats and even the odd Republican screeching about how "racist" it was. The NAACP issued a press release calling it "racially charged political propaganda" akin to "Birth of a Nation," D. W. Griffith's paean to the Ku Klux Klan. Slate described it as an "attempt to inflame white bigotry about interracial relationships and white fears of black male sexuality." Vanderbilt University professor John Geer breathlessly told AP: "I've not met any observer who didn't immediately say, 'Oh, my gosh!' It was a race card."

Senator McCarthy, call your office.

I'm already on the record about that ad. It was not racist despite all the screaming and steaming that tried to paint it that way. Jacoby makes one irrefutable point that proves it is not racist: it would have been exactly as effective no matter what race the candidate was. Think about that. It would have been effective regardless of race.

The thing about the people who are quick to raise the race card is that their first thought is about race. That is not how it is supposed to be nor the way it should be. I honestly never even thought of Harold Ford, Jr. as a black politician. I thought of him (still do, by the way) as a politician. His race is completely irrelevant, at least to me. Isn't that how it is supposed to be?

Cash On Hand

Even as the election cycle winds down to election day, the Republicans still have the advantage in funding. There has been some surge in fundraising for the Democrats, but not enough to offset the overall advantage. In the end, that may be what tips the scales.

Nevertheless, the Democrats' last-minute fundraising surge was not enough to overcome the GOP's earlier fundraising advantage. The three national Republican Party committees had $17 million more cash on hand than their Democratic counterparts as of Oct. 18, according to this week's financial reports.

What's more, Republican committees spent nearly twice as much on their toughest House races than Democratic committees did. The nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute calculated that Republican committees spent $1 million on average to help each of the 35 GOP incumbents who are considered to be most in danger of losing reelection bids. Democratic committees spent an average of about $574,000 on behalf of each of the party's challengers in those races.

In addition, most of the Republican candidates in the House's tightest contests reported having more money in the bank than their Democratic rivals.

With the midterm elections so near, both parties are pouring huge sums into the House's three dozen or so competitive races.

This ties in with the article I posted about earlier regarding how money is being spent and the hardball that goes on behind the curtain. Advertising is one thing, but a ground game is important, too. Depending on how money is being directed an overall superiority in resources may be what carries the day.

Hardly A Surprise

But not worth much, either. The New York Times pulls out the stops and tries to drag Ned Lamont across the finish line.

We wanted to see a capacity for growth and change in Mr. Lieberman. The country is full of Republicans who now realize the Iraq invasion was a disaster, either in its basic concept or in its execution. The most honorable of them are in agony over what has happened. Mr. Lieberman, who had not only continually defended the administration’s Iraq policy but also attacked Democrats who criticized the president, had more cause for soul-searching than most.

But instead of re-evaluating his own positions, Mr. Lieberman blamed his constituents for failing to notice that he had offered some negative comments about the conduct of the war, too, mainly when he was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. He did not protest when Dick Cheney said that people who voted for Mr. Lamont were giving comfort to “Al Qaeda types.” His only reflection seemed devoted to a re-examination of the rules for getting back on the ballot.

They could have saved lots of ink if they had just said what they really meant: we wanted to see Joe Lieberman to come over to our anti-war anti-administration position. Since he didn't, we don't like him.

Ned Lamont has run a far less polished campaign than Mr. Lieberman, but the more we see of him, the more impressed we are by his intelligence and his growing sophistication about the issues facing the nation. He is very much in the Connecticut mold of basically moderate, principled politicians, and his willingness to take on Mr. Lieberman when no one else dared to do it showed real courage and conviction. He would make a good senator. More important, he has the capacity to continually become a better one. We endorse Ned Lamont for Senate.

Since Ned Lamont is pretty much a one trick pony, it is hard to see where the Times saw any evidence of growing sophistication. But this is not surprise, either. The Times endorsed Lamont in the primary, too. The endorsement of newspapers, and especially that of the New York Times, is not that important these days as the old media fades in power and authority. So they can try to drag their one trick pony across the line, but it won't make much difference.

Long Knives

I never paid a heck of a lot of attention to Dick Armey when he was in Congress. He wasn't my representative, after all. Today he has an op-ed in the Washington Post so I guess I have to pay some attention. After all, he's gotten a long knife out. 

Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today — from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?

The answer is simple: Republican lawmakers forgot the party's principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy. Now, the Democrats are reaping the rewards of our neglect — and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

In 1989, Newt Gingrich rose to the number two leadership position in the House after a contentious three-way race pitting young backbench conservatives such as myself, Bob Walker, Joe Barton and others against old bulls such as Minority Leader Bob Michel and other ranking members. We thought they suffered from a minority party mindset and were too accommodating of the Democrats. Out of congressional power for nearly two generations, Republicans had become complacent. Senior members of the party were happy to accept the crumbs afforded by Democratic chairmen. Life was comfortable in the minority as long as you did not rock the boat. Members received their perks — such as travel abroad and special banking privileges — and enough pork projects for reelection. The entire Congress lived by the rule of parochial politics.

Gingrich and I and a handful of true believers in Ronald Reagan's conservative vision set the goal of retaking the House. The "Contract With America" outlined our platform of limited government. This vision appealed to both the social and economic wings of the conservative movement; equally important, it included institutional reforms for a Congress that had grown increasingly arrogant and corrupt. The contract nationalized the vision of the Republican Party in a way that unified our base and appealed to independents. We championed national issues, not local pork projects or the creature comforts of high office.

This is essentially echoing the conventional wisdom as reported by the mainstream media. It's all about those wedge issues to Armey. There's a lot more going on here than first meets they eye, however. He's right in one respect, ideas are important. To some extent it is always necessary to temper ideals to the reality of the world as it is. I think the point Armey is making here is that he believes the party went too far toward pragmatism and therefore strayed from idealism.

Pelosi has stated that House committee chairmen will be chosen by seniority. This could backfire on the Democrats, because members from the most consistently partisan districts are usually the ones who stick around the longest. Chairmen have the power of the subpoena; Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the would-be judiciary chairman, has already drafted articles of impeachment for Bush, while others are calling for investigations on the war in Iraq and the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina. A revenge-hungry Democratic majority, substituting political grudge matches for serious policy, will not remain a majority for long.

How can the Republicans respond?

The leadership must remember that the modern conservative movement is a fusion of social and fiscal conservatives united in their belief in limited government. The party must keep both in the fold. Republicans also need to get back to being the party of big ideas. The greatest threat to American prosperity today is a catastrophic fiscal meltdown resulting from long-term entitlements. Democrats have already lined up behind the solution of raising taxes and reducing benefits. But Americans want more freedom and choice in education, health care and retirement security. Republicans — too busy dreaming up wedge issues to score cheap points against Democrats — have lost sight of their broad national agenda.

The likely Republican losses in next week's elections will not constitute a repudiation of the conservative legacy that drove the Reagan presidency and created the Contract With America. To the contrary, it would represent a rejection of big government conservatism. When we get back to being the party of limited government, putting a national agenda ahead of parochial short-term politics, we will again be a party that the American voters will trust to deal with the serious challenges facing our nation.

Armey wants this to be a wakeup call for the party. It should be, this has been a vicious and tough election cycle. There have been numerous signs that conservatives have become angry at the direction the party has taken. There were Republican incumbents thrown out in Pennsylvania primaries for just that reason. There were other incumbents sent packing elsewhere.

So, in a sense, Armey is correct. The Republicans have not done a good job at sticking to ideals. There are two years to fix that; some folks better get cracking. If the Democrats do take control of the House, they would be forced to deal with a lot of issues instead of simply complaining about everything. I suspect that a Democratic victory is not a sure thing at this point, however. But the Republicans do need to address some of the issues Armey brings up if they want to win in 2008.

UPDATE: Others: The Moderate Voice, PoliBlog, Riehl World View, Alabama Liberation Front,

Not Even The Washington Post…..

…Can avoid the fact that the Democrat's agenda for what they would do if they gain control is long on rhetoric but short on the details needed to make the plans workable. In other words it sounds good, but how do you do all that?

PERHAPS, AS President Bush says, it's too early for Democrats to be "measuring their drapes" in congressional leadership offices. But with it looking increasingly as if Democrats, after 12 years in the minority, will take over the House at least, it's worth looking at their stated agenda — "A New Direction for America" — for a glimpse at what a Democratic majority might entail.

On national security, the House Democrats' plan offers more goals than details. Who could disagree with promises to "eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al-Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan and end the threat posed by the Taliban" or "redouble efforts to stop nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea?" But the hard part — on which Democrats offer no details — is how that is to be done.

On Iraq in particular, the agenda calls for "the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces," with "Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country." Again, what's missing are the details of what "responsible redeployment" might look like. "Insist that Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to unite their country and defeat the insurgency," the Democrats say. Okay, what if that insistence doesn't yield the desired result?

The magic promises of Rangel and others - that they can cut funding to the war without wreaking havoc on the troops simply don't work in the real world. So that alone is a deal breaker for a lot of people. The Democrats have Jim Webb giving radio addresses that essentially promise everyone a pony. The problem is, they do not appear to have the slightest clue how to make all those promises happen other than to cut funds. That is not a plan, that is a hope.

As to another piece of the security agenda, energy independence, the Democrats assert that they will "achieve energy independence for America by 2020 by eliminating reliance on oil from the Middle East and other unstable regions of the world" — a super-sized version of Mr. Bush's pledge to "replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025." The Democratic plan for doing this — tax credits and research funds — sounds remarkably like the Bush approach, down to increased use of switch-grass ethanol. Unlike the president, the Democrats rightly frame energy independence as an environmental as well as national security issue; like the president, they're unwilling — for the obvious reason that they don't want to be branded as tax-raisers — to recommend a carbon tax.

Investor's Business Daily pointed out yesterday that virtually every Democrat in Congress has voted against expanded oil exploration off the coast of the US. They have completely blocked expanded drilling in Alaska. One of their standard ploys has been to go after energy companies. Here's the rub: if they do that, the average person will end up paying higher energy costs. Period. The money won't mystically come from the companies - it will come from you and I. Another way to describe this is that this will be a tax increase, hidden behind the rhetoric.

If even the WaPo can't see all of what is behind the rhetoric this year, you should be thinking about what all these promises mean in the long run. Then if the Dems to take over at least the House, hold on to your wallets. It'll be a bumpy ride.