MOVING FORWARD PART II

Yesterday, I laid out the first 3 points in moving forward: (1) that we’re ok with a big tent as long as the RINO’s are with us on the big things; (2) that we have a coherent appealing agenda and (3) that we need to pick some ideological fights.

My 4th point is related to the third point:

We must get back to our idealist roots. That means talking proudly of the effects of the tax cuts. That means talking about the necessity of missile defense. That means talking about the attacks that the Patriot Act and the SWIFT and NSA intercept programs thwarted. That means talking about closing down the Mexican border before any immigration reform legislation moves an inch. That means talking about confirming judges that aren’t squishy moderates or make up the Constitution on the fly.

I’d frame missile defense in the context of North Korea developing ICBM’s. I’d frame the Patriot Act, the SWIFT and NSA programs as tools that we’ve used to prevent real terrorist attacks, specifically citing the terrorist plots they’ve prevented. Let Democrats defend their actions. Put them in position where they either abandon their positions or they’re forced to say ‘Yes, we want to prevent terrorist attacks but we’re more worried about American’s civil liberties.’ Filibuster the immigration reform legislation. Let them defend the position of granting illegal immigrants citizenship so illegal immigrants ruin municipal and state budgets.

5. We must be a team again. That means relegating John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel to the back bench. If you aren’t with us on the important stuff, you’re out of there. Yes, there’ll be headlines about how they’ve been shunned by ‘far right ideologues’ but we don’t have time to worry what the Agenda Media says.

Another thing that we’ve got to do is take our message on the road, explaining what our agenda is, why we believe in it and how we’ll implement that agenda if given another majority opportunity.

6. We must reject timid, status quo policies. That doesn’t mean that everything on the agenda must be big sweeping reforms. It does require that conservatives confront liberals when they advocate the wrong policies.

Missile defense is something that I’d challenge Democrats on. It’s guaranteed that they’ll say that (a) it’s too expensive and (b) it doesn’t work. Our first response should include this question: What amount is too much for defending ourselves from North Korea’s, and eventually Iran’s, nuclear weapons? Another question I’d ask is this: We put a man on the moon. We’re creating life-lengthening perscription drugs and medical treatments daily. We’re building high tech things all the time. Why should we believe that we aren’t capable of building an effective missile defense system in the next 5 years if we commit to a robust research and development program?

TOMORROW IS VETERANS DAY

Now there are some people out there who will tell you that since I never served in the military, I have no right to talk of our military and the men and women who served. Well, you can just imagine what impact their bleatings have on me ...

I grew up in the military. My father was a career Air Force. I firmly believe that there is no better group of men and women anywhere, in any walk of life in this country than those who serve in our armed forces and their families. You will find a higher degree of integrity and care in any base housing complex, enlisted or officers, than you will find in any other neighborhood in America ... except, perhaps, for the Amish --- and I'm not all that sure about them!

Tomorrow perhaps you could take the time to participate in some ceremony in your city or town honoring these men and women. A political party led by men who have referred to our men and women in uniform as rapists, terrorists, murders and just plain stupid, a political party that has compared these fine men and women to Hitler's storm troopers has just taken control in Washington DC. I'm sure this must weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of those serving now and the millions of veterans who served in the past. Go out of you way to let them know you care, and you appreciate the sacrifice they have made.

MOVING FORWARD

Last night, I vented. Tonight, I offer a plan to move conservatism forward. I’ve been up and down the blogosphere today and I’ve seen alot of posts using the term first principles. That’s a good place to start but I’ll attempt to put some meat on that framework.

1. We can’t move forward until ‘We The Activists’ tell RINO’s that we’re fine with a big tentbut we won’t tolerate their compromising away the most important issues of the conservative movement, specifically judges, national security, taxes, fiscal sanity and reform.

When John McCain and John Warner ‘negotiated’ (gave away is more accurate) away the hammer of the Constitutional Option with Robert Byrd’s band of liberals, they essentially told those of us who’ve fought the good fight for originalist judges that we weren’t important. McCain’s main considerations were the media’s adoration. Of course, he officially said that senatorial comity was the reason. Instead of victory, McCain ‘delivered’ a single day’s positive press from the Fossilized Media. Big deal.

Unlike showboats like McCain and Graham, we don’t live for the media’s adoration. We’d rather do what’s right than compromise our core principles. By contrast, McCain and Graham treat true conservatism like it’s the plague. Certainly, they’re free to make that choice. That said, it’s our choice to end McCain’s and Graham’s careers before they ruin the GOP further. Their actions sent the message that they weren’t interested in a famous Reaganism, that “It’s amazing what can be accomplished if we don’t care who gets the credit.” These showboats’ actions said that it was every man for themselves.

McCain threw the Constitution under the proverbial bus when he pushed BCRA through. That’s unforgiveable and unpardonable by itself. It got worse when he put together the Gang of 14. Again, he said that the Constitution didn’t mean what it said. (Keep that in mind when McCain announces his presidential bid. Does anyone think that he’d nominate true conservatives like Alito and Roberts? Don’t bet on it.) Instead, McCain’s actions essentially said that the minority party had the right to do the unconstitutional.

Another RINO that needs to ‘get religion’ immediately is Chuck Hagel. He’s acted like the Democrats’ foreign policy pronouncements were words from God’s mouth. By voting with them on the Phase II Intelligence report’s headlines, he gave the Democrats all the ammo they needed in terms of political cover. The headlines, you’ll recall, said one thing; the key findings another thing entirely.

2. It’s vital that we regain a sense of teamwork based on a coherent, appealing vision of where America needs to go next. An important part of that means a House and Senate leadership team that are unabashed conservatives who will fight for the things that made our movement the dominant force in American politics. Another important part to the leadership puzzle must be installing people who can clearly communicate why we believe what we believe. It isn’t good enough to say “I’m for this” or “I’m against that.” If someone vying for a Senate or House leadership position can’t clearly answer the why questions that the media will throw at them, then they aren’t leadership material.

One person that I’d strongly recommend for a leadership position is Michele Bachmann. She’s a great communicator and she’s unapologetically conservative. She also has the rare gift of answering questions on point, not in some roundabout, evasive way. That’s why she’s got such a strong connection with voters.

3. We need to pick some fights on the most important issues of the day.

The first fight I’d pick is on national security. I’m hearing that the Democrats are thinking of ways of gutting the Patriot Act. It’s important that President Bush knows that ‘We the Activists’ will fight with him if the Pelosi puppets attempt to gut the Patriot Act. It’s important that conservatives everywhere bone up on who’s behind the gutting of this crucial anti-terrorism tool. It’s time that we exposed CAIR’s and like-minded terrorist-supporting groups’ agendas. Most conservatives know what CAIR and UFPJ, the Tides Center and other far left groups are about. When that debate starts, conservatives everywhere must get the facts out to everyone.

That means calling into radio talk shows. That means writing letters to the editor. That means telling friends and co-workers what CAIR and other subversive groups don’t want the public to know. That means using every means possible, not just the blogosphere, to get the information out.

TUESDAY WAS GOOD NEWS FOR.....WHO?

I notice that the newspaper and broadcast pundits are telling us who the winners and losers are in Tuesday's startling elections. Well ... I might as well get in the game here with everyone else.

The envelope please.

And the winners in this year's midterm elections are:

Islamic Fascists

(Accepting the award for the Islamic Fascists will be Osama bin Laden)

The focal point of the war against Islamic fascism was Iraq. The jihadists were sending their fighters to Iraq, there to be killed in gratifying numbers by American and coalition troops. What was once American resolve is now American weakness. The people have listened to the politicians -- one group that wanted to finish the job, another that didn't -- and gave the nod to the quitters. Today America is weaker in the eyes of those who would destroy us. Not a cause for celebration.

Slackards

(Accepting the award will be Shirley Sternfaulter, a young mother of three who wants the government to pay for her child care.)

A huge percentage of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday went there to vote for a living. They feel that the purpose of government is to make sure that the basic necessities of their lives are paid for, while they spend their own money on the newest technology in flat-screen televisions, gadget-filled cell phones and subscriptions to People Magazine.

Illegal Aliens

(Putting down his leaf blower to accept the award is Pedro Lopez-Garcia-Menendez-Gonzalez, who pays no taxes in the U.S., and sends 80% of each paycheck back to Vera Cruz to take care of his wife and children.)

Yesterday President Bush as much as said that amnesty would be the order of the day. Now that those pesky Republicans have been kicked out of the majority in the House of Representatives, the president and the Senate will have clear sailing on their plan for amnesty for the 20 million plus illegal aliens now residing in this country. Oh .. and the border? Nothing will be done to stop the Mexican invasion, so as soon as Pedro has his paperwork Maria and the kids will be on a bus.

Those who want a weaker America

(Accepting the award will be Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin, sometimes known as Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister of France. Dominique was the leader of the Axis of Weasels before he became Prime Minister.)

A poll earlier this year said that something like 58% of Europeans wanted a weaker America. They got their wish on Tuesday. Who is going to be there to pull their candied asses out of the oven when they finally wake up and realize the great strides that have been made in the Islamification of Europe? Hello Eurabia.

The first blow to be struck in the weakening of America will be for the Democrats to get rid of John Bolton as the Ambassador to the United Nations. They'll replace him with someone who will not stand up to UN corruption and the forces who want to weaken us.

The Libertarian Party?

(I would be happy to accept this reward, but the don't like me all that much because I believe that we need to defend this country from both the Islamic fascists and the Mexican invasion.)

Tuesday's vote showed that a lot of conservatives and libertarians in this country are completely fed up with the Republican Party. If ever there was a time for the emergence of a third party that would adhere to conservative and libertarian values -- without an obsessive allegiance to religious fundamentalists -- now is the time. The Libertarian Party could be just that party. We'll see if they're up to the task.

The leftist media.

(Accepting the award for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Boston Globe, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine and too many more to mention will be Dan Rather)

Ninety percent or more of these people vote Democrat. They engaged in a six-year campaign of demonization of George Bush. It worked.

Washington Lawyers

(Accepting the Award will be the President of the D.C. Bar Association)

Get ready for two years of investigations, subpoenas, hearings...you name it. Everything will be investigated, then investigated again. But the Republicans did it to themselves...every last bit of it.

SCHUMER SHAMELESSLY PREACHES TO ALLEN

Democratic Senator from NY Chuck Schumer urged Republican Senator George Allen from VA to concede to Democratic opponent Jim Webb despite the razor sharp margin that separates the votes: .03%

“I am urging, with all due respect, the president today to urge Mr. Allen to forego this futile recount and contestation policy, which will simply delay the inevitable, which is that Jim Webb is going to be the next senator from Virginia. Mr. Allen should do the right and gentlemanly thing and forgo this futile recount.”

What?? Democrats preaching about how to “do the the right and gentlemanly thing” and concede? Two of the most embarrassing examples of Democrats refusing to concede an election, in quite ungentlemanly fashion, are here:

-Nation waits as Kerry refuses to concede Ohio November 3, 2004

-DNC Chairman Urges Gore to Concede; He Refuses Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2000

POST MORTEM

Why Republicans got shellacked in the midterms.
by Fred Barnes

THIS ONE IS PRETTY EASY TO EXPLAIN. Republicans lost the House and probably the Senate because of Iraq, corruption, and a record of taking up big issues and then doing nothing on them. Of these, the war was by far the biggest factor. Unpopular wars trump good economies and everything else. President Truman learned this in 1952, as did President Johnson in 1968. Now, it was President Bush's turn, and since his name wasn't on the ballot, his party took the hit.

The defeat for Republicans was short of devastating--but only a little short. The House seats the party lost in New York and Connecticut and Pennsylvania will be hard to win back. Just as Republicans have locked in their gains in the South over the past two decades, Democrats should be able to solidify their hold on seats in the Northeast, as the nation continues to split sharply along North-South lines.

What should worry Republicans most, however, is erosion of its strength in the West and in two states in particular: Colorado and Arizona. Fours years ago, Colorado was solidly Republican. Since then, Democrats have won a Senate seat, two House seats, the governorship, and both houses of the state legislature. At the state level, that's realignment.

In Arizona, Republicans dropped two House seats and Republican Senator John Kyl got a mild scare. Kyl, by the way, may be finest and most able senator in Washington. He's certainly in the top five. Meanwhile, Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano cruised to victory.

The bottom line is this: Colorado and Arizona may not be there for Republicans in the 2008 presidential race. Of course, everything depends on the actual candidates, but these two states start out as presidential swing states. This is a new development.

Virginia is now worrisome for Republicans, even if Senator George Allen wins reelection via recount. It has become more a middle Atlantic than a Southern state, as University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato notes. (Sabato, by the way, picked the outcome in the House and Senate almost perfectly.) Republicans have lost the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia, which have grown into a third of the state's vote. And Representative Thelma Drake almost lost her House seat in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area, a Republican stronghold heavily populated with active duty and retired military.

Already the wails of the immigration restrictionists are rising, insisting Republicans lost because they weren't tough on keeping illegal border-crossers out. Not true. The test was in Arizona, where two of the noisiest border hawks, Representatives J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost House seats. Graf lost in a seat along the Mexican border, where illegal immigrants flock.

What Americans want is a full-blown solution to the immigration crisis. And that will come only when Republicans come together on a "comprehensive" measure that not only secures the border but also provides a way for illegals in the United States to work their way to citizenship and establishes a temporary worker program. If Republicans don't grab this issue, Democrats will.

Immigration was a big failure of Republicans over the past two years, but hardly the only one. Republicans cast themselves as the party of reform, but they didn't reform anything. And heaven knows, the public is eager for a lot to be reformed, starting with Congress itself and moving on to taxes and entitlements.

Congressional Republicans left President Bush hanging when he courageously proposed and campaigned for Social Security reform in 2005. They passed a last-minute, totally inadequate immigration bill (700 miles of fence) this fall. They toyed with doing something serious about earmarks (spending measures tossed into appropriation bills by individual members of Congress), then did too little.

With a serious record of reform to boast about, Republicans surely would have done better. They would have minimized the tendency of voters, in the sixth year of the Bush presidency, to shy away from any candidate with a "R" by his or her name. Sure, they'd have lost the House. But I suspect the margin would have been considerably smaller. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi would have a numerical majority but not a working, governing majority.

What happens in a bad Republican year is that good Republican candidates lose. There were many of them: House challengers David McSweeney in Illinois and Van Taylor in Texas, lieutenant governor candidate Luther Strange in Alabama and Tom McClintock in California, and House incumbents Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania, Jim Ryun of Kansas, and Clay Shaw of Florida.

But you have to give Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic campaign chief, credit for recruiting an impressive group of candidates, including a few non-liberals like Brad Ellsworth in Indiana and Heath Shuler in North Carolina. The media, however, is exaggerating the number of these unconventional Democrats. They are a handful, and the pattern of moderate and conservative Democrats when they get to Washington is to pipe down. Or, as losing Republican Congressman Chris Chocola said of his victorious opponent Joe Donnelly, they become "Nancy Pelosi."

Conservatives won't want to hear this, but the Republican who maneuvered his way into the most impressive victory of the election was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay, he's sui generis. But he won a landslide victory after moving to the center, while holding onto conservatives by not hiking taxes. Just think if he were eligible for the White House in 2008. Even (some) conservatives would be clamoring for him to run.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.