Vote Early and Often
BARNES, FRED
EDITORIAL Vote Early and Often David Kuo, once an official of President Bush's faith-based initiative, published a book this month that attacks the White House for privately ridiculing evangelical...
...But they are supremely important when America is at war...
...They got nowhere on overhauling Social Security and only part of the way—beefed-up border security—on immigration reform...
...They claim to be the grownups of American politics...
...Still, the reasons given for staying home on Election Day are pathetically disconnected from the realities of politics and political power...
...Losing simply hurts a political party...
...It won't lead to a Republican course correction any more than losing the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections taught Democrats to move to the right...
...GOP Aims to Scare Up Big Voter Turnout" was the headline on a Washington Post story last week...
...For them to skip out on their obligation to vote in this election over a petty grievance—or, for that matter, over a not-so-petty grievance—would mark them as politically childish...
...Would Democrats join with social and religious conservatives to curb abortion and block same-sex marriage...
...And, for the foreseeable future, the Republican party is the only vehicle through which conservatives and moderates can accomplish their goals...
...President Bush and the Republican Congress have spent too much of the taxpayer's money...
...But allowing Democrats to take over Congress won't achieve that...
...We know this from the number of religious conservatives in high positions at the White House: Bush himself, Mike Gerson, Karen Hughes, Peter Wehner, Tim Goeglein, and that's just for starters...
...Would Democrats please small-government conservatives by cutting taxes and limiting spending growth...
...They understand what's at stake in the struggle against Islamist terrorists...
...As for Republican efforts to spur a big turnout on November 7, the press frowns on such cheap tactics...
...In speech after speech, President Bush has evoked the famous words of Winston Churchill in the dark days of February 1941...
...EDITORIAL Vote Early and Often David Kuo, once an official of President Bush's faith-based initiative, published a book this month that attacks the White House for privately ridiculing evangelical Christians while cynically manipulating how they vote...
...They know how to keep power once they get it...
...Don't bet on it...
...Rather, the prerequisite for attaining any of these goals is a Republican Congress...
...Would they thrill libertarians by pursuing privatization of Social Security or by resisting the demands of the global-warming faddists for a full-blown regulatory state...
...Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down...
...No doubt Republicans thought this in 1954 when Democrats won back both houses of Congress...
...And maybe Bush and company do...
...His tale of White House hypocrisy in dealing with religious conservatives is bogus...
...Their home team, of course, is the Democrats...
...Colbert asked Kuo why he wrote the book...
...It's as uncomplicated as that...
...Give us the tools, and we will finish the job...
...It shouldn't, so long as Republicans—and especially conservative Republicans—act like adults, not like petulant children angry over one thing or another that didn't go their way...
...A landslide loss in 2006 would merely weaken the Republican party...
...Politics doesn't work that way, and it never has...
...Churchill declared: "We shall not fail or falter...
...They would halt the tough but entirely legal interrogations of terrorist leaders that have proved so successful in uncovering and thwarting plots to strike America a second time and perhaps a third or a fourth...
...Never in a million years...
...The other ballyhooed reason for not showing up on Election Day is that Democrats, once in power again, will misbehave so egregiously that Republicans will roar back in 2008, stronger and more conservative than ever...
...Meanwhile, the mainstream media, like sportswriters cheerleading for the home team, is predicting a landslide in the interest of promoting one...
...National elections are always important...
...Because I think someone had to point out that Jesus and George W. Bush are different people," he said...
...The list goes on...
...Who knew...
...Kuo, by the way, has been embraced by the media, welcomed everywhere from 60 Minutes to The Colbert Report...
...In short, Democrats don't take the terrorist threat seriously...
...Today, Democrats would deny the president the tools...
...If you suspect there are forces eager to suppress Republican turnout, you are right...
...They would weaken, if not eliminate, the Patriot Act...
...Not a chance...
...Yes, the Republican performance in the last two years has been disappointing...
...The difference now is that Democrats no longer want to carry on a real war against terrorists...
...And for most of those years, Democrats held on to power in defiance of a rising conservative tide in the country...
...They wince when Bush brings up 9/11...
...And the main theme is that Republicans are about to be blown away...
...They regard his war on terrorism as more a political strategy for winning elections than a necessary plan to wage an offensive battle against terrorists around the world...
...Conservatives in particular should know better...
...we shall not weaken or tire...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...Would they satisfy moderates by compromising with conservatives...
...Only under duress...
...The question now is whether this message will persuade Republican voters to stay home on Election Day...
...In Islamic jihadism, we face a foe that is eager to kill Americans in large numbers and as ruthless as it was on 9/11...
...The book arrived, cynically enough, just in time for the midterm election—an election Kuo says Christians should boycott...
...Rarely has the press echoed Democratic themes as relentlessly as it has in the closing weeks of the 2006 campaign...
...The president and Republicans need to be taught a lesson: We hear that a lot from conservatives...
...The Iraq war isn't going well...
...They would constrain the National Security Agency from eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls to and from America...
...But that was followed by 40 years of Democratic control of the House and 26 years of Democratic rule in the Senate...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 7
