Tuesday November 7, 2006 is Election Day and many polls and pundits are suggesting that the Republican faithful may sit this one out, effectively handing control of Congress to the leftist’s who dominate the Democratic Party.  The most disheartening aspect of this phenomenon may be the readiness of some conservative leaders to aid those whose interests lie in suppressing conservative turnout by encouraging this sort of spiteful response by the rank and file in its effort to punish Republicans.   .

Among the reasons for this rebellion among conservative voters is disillusionment with the President’s amnesty plan for illegal aliens, excessive federal spending, the expansion of the Medicare program, the attack on the 1^st Amendment known as campaign finance reform, and the seemingly endless cycle of violence in Iraq and the resulting toll it has taken in American blood and treasure.  That the Bush Administration is on the wrong side of most of these issues is indeed troubling and I must admit that during the height of the immigration debate earlier this summer, I too was ready to revolt; In fact I sent this letter to the White House and R.N.C. the morning after watching the President’s speech in May:

May 18, 2006

Dear Mr. President:

You’ve finally done it.  You have finally succeeded in driving away one of your staunchest supporters (and defenders) after six plus years of loyalty.  I supported you, Mr. President, in spite of repeated betrayals of what I thought were our shared values because I felt you were the best man to secure and defend our homeland; but I am afraid that has now changed. In fact, just this morning, after reading the transcript of your speech on immigration, I went out to my driveway and removed the Bush-Cheney 2004 bumper stickers from my car.  They are now an embarrassment to my wife and me.

Your refusal to defend and protect our borders from invasion is a direct violation of your oath of office and is, in my opinion, tantamount to treason. Your betrayal of your countrymen in favor of foreign nationals and their corrupt and hostile government is not an act which I, as an American citizen and loyal Republican, am prepared to overlook.  Your collusion with the corrupt Mexican government against your fellow citizens in the Minutemen Project; your refusal to acknowledge or address the armed attacks on law enforcement officers by Mexican troops and drug gangs; and your apparent lack of concern for our border communities that are being over-run are a disgrace and a dereliction.  Your woefully inadequate plan to stop a few lawbreakers at the border, while rewarding those who elude interdiction with a path to citizenship is as ludicrous and incoherent an immigration policy as it is insulting to my intelligence; so much for the straight-talking Texan.

Your patronizing declaration that illegal immigrants fill jobs here that Americans will not is quite simply wrong: they only depress wages and take jobs from the most vulnerable American workers.  Not only does this condescending attitude force countless Americans into unemployment, it also condemns the illegal workers you apparently prefer to a de-facto second-class citizen status similar to that which they suffered in Mexico.  These illegal aliens put a drain on our social safety-net (which you saw fit to expand), and on our schools and hospitals which are overwhelmed and in some cases closing their doors.  And to add insult to injury, the simple middle-class, taxpaying working stiffs who play by the rules are forced to foot the bill even while we struggle to support our own families.

Mr. President, in a previous and less cynical age, one of your predecessors, Woodrow Wilson, in response to similar provocations from Mexico, sent the United States’ Army under General Pershing to secure our border and protect our citizens; your response, nothing short of surrender, is a betrayal to his legacy of patriotism; and to your own.

If, Mr. President, the plan you and the elitists of both parties in the U.S. Senate support becomes law, I will do something I have not done since becoming eligible to vote: I will stay home on Election Day and watch the G.O.P. lose control of Congress.  This, I hope will encourage my Party to re-evaluate its priorities and find a new standard-bearer who will put his country before his friends in Corporate America:  A man like Ronald Reagan.

But something funny happened on “the path to citizenship;” the stalwart conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives – led by the likes of Tom Tancredo, J.D. Hayworth, and my own Pete King – led the charge against this travesty of justice and killed the proposal while passing the Bill authorizing the construction of a 700 mile wall along our southern border.  Are we now to punish these conservative leaders for their courageous and successful stand in defense of U.S. national sovereignty?  There are many reasons why conservatives must go out in droves to the polls on Election Day.  Let me touch on just a few.

The War:

One of the hallmarks of the American Conservative movement is its rigorous defense of the great Western Judeo-Christian tradition; in contrast, the multi-cultural, post-modern liberalism which has taken over the Democratic Party is openly hostile to this tradition and as such cannot be trusted to mount a defense against those forces determined to destroy that tradition.

During the Vietnam War (after the drubbing our forces inflicted on the V.C. and N.V.A. during the Tet Offensive) President Nixon ordered an acceleration of the U.S. attacks on the North and forced our enemies to accept a negotiated peace on terms relatively favorable for the U.S. and our South Vietnamese allies.  The key to this deal was continued American support (air, logistical, and financial) for the South.  However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal anti-war Democrats took control of Congress and promptly withheld all funding for our allies in South Vietnam.  The result was one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the 20^th century:  within months the NVA swept through South Vietnam slaughtering and displacing millions of innocent freedom loving human beings while turning our partial victory into ignominious defeat.  Concurrently with the communist victory in Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge communists in neighboring Cambodia, emboldened by the abdication of the West of its commitment to defend liberty swept into power and through purges, slaughter, and willful starvation killed literally millions of innocents.  I mention this for a simple reason: history has a tendency to repeat itself.

No matter how you feel about the reasons for invading Iraq, now that we are there it is essential that we win this war for the sake of the innocent Iraqi people, regional stability, and the maintenance of U.S. credibility.  A Democratic takeover of Congress today will result in a precipitous pullout of U.S. forces from the Middle East (Charlie Rangel has already threatened to cut off funding.)  This will have a number of dire consequences:  The elected Iraqi government will in all likelihood collapse; it will embolden the terror-sponsoring regimes in Iran and Syria and lead to turmoil in the broader Middle East; it will give the forces of jihad a stranglehold on the world’s oil supply and with it a steady stream of revenue with which to fund attacks on the West; it will rejuvenate the now reeling global terrorist movement in much the same way the U.S. pullouts in Beirut and Somalia did; and the militant Islamic jihadist’s now flooding into Iraq to take on the U.S. military will be free to turn their attention to defenseless U.S. cities.  The “domino effect” notwithstanding, our enemies in the Vietnam War did not follow us home.

Immigration:

While President Bush is a staunch advocate of blanket amnesty for the estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today, it is important to remember two points: 1) he is not on the ballot this year; and 2) his allies in this effort are not Republican’s, the overwhelming majority of whom voted against his plan, but Democrats who voted overwhelmingly in favor of it.  Should the Democrats achieve majority status on Capital Hill, rest assured amnesty will be the law of the land and the border wall will not be built.

Judges:

Congressional Democrat’s and liberal judges have been working overtime to hamper the national security and anti-terror efforts of our government by blocking vital programs and creating new rights for terrorist suspects outside of all previously accepted legal norms.  And court’s throughout the country have been re-writing or ignoring the Constitution when ruling on such issues as abortion, gay marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance, flag burning, and the Ten Commandments.  It is vital that the people, through their elected representatives and the legislative process make these decisions rather than a cabal of un-elected and unaccountable judges with lifetime tenure.  If the Democrat’s take control of the U.S. Senate they will ensure that elitist, activist judges impose their will on us all to the detriment of our system of representative democracy.

Taxes/Economy:

As a direct result of Republican tax and economic policies our country has seen rigorous economic expansion, historically low unemployment, low interest rates, tame inflation, and booming stock and housing markets.  This remarkable record has been achieved in spite of an inherited recession, the attacks of 9/11, two wars, and the worst natural disaster in American history.  A Democratic takeover of Congress would render the Administration’s economic policies ”dead on arrival” on Capital Hill and result inevitably in higher taxes, higher unemployment, and slower economic growth.  If you feel as I do that federal spending and the U.S. budget deficit are way too high, just think how much worse it will get once tax and spend liberals like Charlie Rangel control the purse strings.

The issues that our country faces in the next few years are just too important to register your disapproval of this or that specific policy of the Bush Administration by staying home in protest on Election Day.  It is vital that we conservatives get out and vote Republican because the future of our Republic is too important for “sending messages” by handing control of Congress to liberal Democrats. Such a self-righteous exercise in ideological preening is not only self-defeating but also irresponsible and ultimately dangerous