North Star Writers Group

These are dark days for conservatives in America. The halcyon days of 1994, when speaking the truth in one voice about HillaryCare won Congress back for the GOP for the first time in 40 years, are truly no more. Democrats are pushing one outright socialist proposal after another and Republicans, rather than rising as one to stop these unconstitutional invasions of personal liberty, are instead tripping over each other as they race to the left, seeing who can say "Me too!" the soonest and loudest. The only thing more disappointing than that sorry spectacle is that one could make a convincing case that it truly does represent the will of the majority of Americans, so thoroughly have so many discarded the concept of personal responsibility.

There isn't much time left to turn back the tide. Should Democrats gain much more ground towards their goal of a totally socialist America, any objection voiced at that point will be all too easily thwarted. Government, once created and/or expanded, simply does not go away. It, much more than a diamond, is forever. The only way to roll it back will be force – in greater strength than what liberals will use to keep their power in place. Sound silly? This week, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called the Capitol Hill police on Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) for smoking a cigar in his own office! Calling the cops for lighting a stogie in your own quarters – that should tell you something about how liberals react when their edicts are defied, property rights be damned.

For the time being at least, the GOP is still the last, best vessel for conservatism. But that conclusion will have to be officially withdrawn if Republicans cannot find their spine and their nerve and start fighting rather than mimicking liberals. Yes, the Democrats and their propagandist allies in the mainstream media will call you every name in the book and accuse you of being slightly meaner than Hitler. Yes, a good portion of the ignorant, responsibility-shirking masses whose votes you may need to get re-elected will mindlessly believe these slanders and calumnies. No, it won't be a picnic in the park on a sunny, summer Saturday afternoon. But when has the right thing to do ever not been the hard thing to do?

Thankfully, President Bush understands this. He'll never get high poll ratings, but history will judge him well for his courage. And more importantly, America will be much better off, starting with a complete absence of terrorist attacks after Clinton's eight years of dereliction, which culminated in the evil horror of 9/11.

But what is the purpose in slavish devotion to re-election if doing so just enacts left-wing policies a little bit more slowly? After all, going off a cliff at 55 mph instead of warp speed will leave your car just as smashed and you just as dead. The real answer is to hit the brakes and then put it in reverse - a gear that Democrats do not have in their mental transmissions. The purpose of re-election is to implement your principles, presuming you have them anymore. Without that, re-election has no purpose whatsoever.

Sadly, I see little evidence that Republicans have any fight at all in them. Most of them are living down to P.J. O'Rourke's sarcastic suggestion for a GOP motto: "We're just like the Democrats, only not quite as much." Except it should probably be revised to say "almost as much," so eager are so many Republicans to spend. They appear to have taken away the wrong lesson from their loss of Congress – that they weren't liberal enough, when in fact they weren't conservative enough. If they stay on this course, they will lose both the conservative right and the independent center/left, just like they did in 2006. Conservatives, rightly seeing no difference between a 55-mph plunge and a warp speed one, will vote third party or stay home. Independents will choose the authentic socialist over the johnny-come-lately one. And the end result will be outright communism, courtesy of an even more liberal Congress and President Hillary Clinton.

The GOP needs to be a true conservative alternative to Democratic communism - a choice, not merely an echo. If they can't bring themselves to be something other than Vichy Republicans (so nicknamed after the Vichy French government that was merely a Nazi puppet during World War II German occupation), conservatives will be finished with the party. And it might not be long thereafter that conservatives would be finished with the socialist nightmare in which liberals will have imprisoned America, as the only option for retaining liberty and freedom - not to mention the assurance of safety from Islamic terror - at that point would be to declare independence and begin the second American Revolution.

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