The education that America is undergoing in Iraq concerning the rightful prosecution of a war is both timely and long overdue. In that regard, Christopher Hitchens' editorial makes a number of vital points, but two are crucial to this nation's future ability to confront the evil of Islamic extremism.

The first and more salient is the lesson on the nature of one's enemy in warfare. In part because this war occurred in our post-Cold War environment when the U.S. had no credible adversaries, but also because of our culturally induced propensity to impute to this enemy a wholly unwarranted belief in its susceptibility to reason, many are now convinced that the growing intensity of this war can be blamed on our invasion of Iraq.

Integral to this is the supremely misguided tendency of the left to bifurcate the war in Iraq from the broader war with the Islamic jihadists.  The political transparency of their motives for this does little to dissuade them from their smug conclusion that Iraq was always a key front in this war, but is now the key front. 

Second, we hear virtually nothing about our responsibility to the millions of Iraqis who fervently want a democratic nation with strong support of individual rights.  There is a consensus that were we to adopt the left's recommendation of withdrawal from Iraq before achieving adequate stability there would be a far more disastrous replay of our departure in 1991 when Saddam murdered thousands of innocents.

As Mr. Hitchens concludes:

...all demands for an evacuation are based on the fantasy that there is a distinction between "over there" and "over here."  In a world-scale confrontation with jihadism, this distinction is idle and false.

More damning, it's manifestly dangerous because it encourages the specious pre-9/11 line of reasoning that for political reasons imposes an artificial taxonomy on the various strains of Islamic extremism, when they are all irrefutably from the same genus. 

These arguments illustrate our admittedly unpleasant predicament which is exacerbated by the lack of viable alternative strategies.  Yet every predicament, however desperate, can be exploited for advantage and this one is no different:  To wit, clarification of intent and tenacity of resolve are the tandem traits most likely to produce victory over any enemy, and to the degree we adhere to them we create powerful force multipliers that strengthen our efforts across all fronts.

However, as is true with the challenges each generation faces, there are political realities that confound the simplicity of any apparently obvious strategy, and we certainly have an abundance of those as well.  Therefore, as has been argued in these columns before, this is a bona fide two-front war, one on the home front that is politically charged, the other on the numerous fronts around the world, with Iraq and Afghanistan being the centerpieces.

Our only hope is to neutralize the political influences by making the case to the American people that this threat is real, that it existed long before we invaded Iraq, and that our chances for prevailing are enhanced by presenting a unified political front. 

That effort can benefit from Republican leaders and candidates for office being as apolitical and candid as possible concerning the seriousness of this threat, and by making the case that the voters will play a major role in determining whether the ultimate outcome is favorable or hostile to our Republic.

Retired Marine officer, current employee at the Department of Homeland Security, and friend of the editor, Bill Powell, submitted this unclassified testimony given to the House Subcommittee on Intelligence on September 20, 2006, by Professor Walid Phares, subtitled Intercepting Radicalization at the Indoctrination Stage.

It's this level of analytical exegesis that one rarely finds and it demonstrates the efficacy of the resources and capabilities that a resolute enemy such as the Islamic extremists enjoy in a free, pluralistic society.  The assessment concludes by calling for a

...comprehensive strategy of containment of the Terror ideology within the framework of the civil and democratic rights of society.

Beyond bringing into stark relief the full breadth and depth of this profound challenge, it also makes one ponder whether our political will is sufficiently intact degrade if not decimate this enemy.  Given our belated response to attacks on the U.S., its interests and allies over the past two decades it's a legitimate question. 

A key explanation for the checkered way in which we've prosecuted this war is its unprecedented nature, which belongs to a military genus that the United States has never faced and for which counter measures remain in their infancy.  Indeed, the tenants of asymmetrical warfare exploit inherent force structure vulnerabilities while insidiously testing the myriad weaknesses that inform the very essence of our democratic society.

Those premises have forced us to fundamentally rethink every aspect of conventional warfare and to exempt no viable and legal alternative that might inhibit the Jihadists' capabilities to strike.  It's ironic that those such as Mr. Powell, who have a deep understanding of this enemy as well as the unique manner in which our current political landscape a priori dismisses the most effective tools at our disposal, are those for whom the left has an abiding distrust.

We segue to the great unfinished work, On War, by General Carl Von Clausewitz, which is a veritable compendium of theoretical and strategic battlefield wisdom that should be required reading for every American, beginning with our mainstream media and ending with our Potomac elites.  It begins with the definition of war as

...an act of violence to compel our opponent fulfill our will.

Of course, our cultural Brahmins would excise the word "violence" from this definition, preferring the softer contours of the word "wishfulness" which implies the need for at least a decade of diplomacy, which is typically sufficient to gather the political momentum for appeasement.

From there it takes us on a tour of remarkably insightful and nuanced tutorials that at once convince the reader of their veracity and of the difficulty of applying them in our contemporary age when political correctness and the allure of antiseptic warfare encourage (read, mandate) a strategic diffidence that only assures that the conflict will be needlessly protracted with commensurately higher casualties.

As we watch our elected officials preen and posture in advance of the November elections we would do well to remember that the most effective strategy is that which redefines the terms of engagment to maximize our strategic advantage, which also provides unambiguous evidence of the resolute nature of our will.  Anything short of that telegraphs the kind of weakness that this foe will exploit with a level of lethality that will dwarf the barbarism of 9/11.

When reflecting on that formula for victory, one party leaps instantly to mind and it isn't the party of Pelosi, Kennedy, and Durbin, the left's practitioners of defeat.  Therefore, cast your vote accordingly.

Although it's an edifying exercise to cull from history examples that highlight the marvelous way in which civilization has advanced, it's more instructive to include evidence of the fragility of the civic framework that provides the conditions for economic and technological advancement.  Few contemporary historians have the ability to succinctly frame that instruction as well as Victor Davis Hanson, and his recent editorial is a stark reminder that our Western liberal democratic tradition is a fragile construction that we take for granted at our peril.

It's clear that the essence of Islamic extremism short-circuits the intellectual and cultural history of nearly two thousand years of Western civilization.  We can be forgiven if we believed there was a broad if tacit consensus that, with the 20th century's notable exceptions of communism and totalitarianism aside, liberal democracies, with their guarantee of economic and personal liberty, are the superlative example of the very best civilization has to offer. 

These stone-age jihadists, who have forced us to defend what we were convinced was axiomatic, have, in the process, created civic fissures in our erstwhile seamless front.  Indeed, it's because our hallowed respect for individual rights is so precious to us that we take any encroachments upon them so seriously, grudgingly accepting them only when we're looking down the barrel of a gun.  Dissension is further evident in the various ways we have characterized this threat, which can be graphed on a continuum, with those on the left tending to minimize it and those on the right overcompensating for fear the left's version of reality will become predominant. 

The left's polity is also susceptible to inversely handicapping the retrograde Salafist culture because it features is a stipulated (dictated?) equality under their mantra of multiculturalism.  Therefore, unlike conservatives who dismiss out of hand the Wahaabi tradition that subjugates women by proscribing voting rights and forces them to clothe from head to foot, the liberal is in something of an intellectual quandary of his own design.  Indeed, the only way to avoid the charge of cultural imperialism is to accede to the Islamic code that effectively denies rights to half their population.

One of Professor Hanson's assertions is that

...the Enlightenment is not always lost on the battlefield.  It can be surrendered through fear or indifference as well.

He adduces the examples of the Mozart opera in Berlin that was shut down for fear of reprisals, as well as the cases of Salman Rusdie and Theo Van Gogh.  However, it's crucial to also understand that fear and indifference are protean and culturally fluid, which is to say that each generation creates its own metrics that includes the thresholds that trigger them.  All of which means that our will to survive is predicated on our aptitude for threat assessment and there is evidence that one political party's ability in this regard is, to put it kindly, lacking.

These illustrations persuasively argue that our many advances notwithstanding, civic evolution is neither a linear phenomenon nor one immune from forces that would seek its destruction.  But rather than minimize the threat or fabricate obtuse academic excuses for it, we must consider the three decades that it took for us to recognize it as borrowed time and finally bring to it the grim seriousness it truly deserves.

The problem is that we have by no means achieved the consensus necessary to bring the full force of our might to bear upon it.  There are clearly cultural impediments that underlie our reticence to see in the Islamofascists the possibility of a radically different world, one in which the threat of regional decimation is both manifest and permanent.

That leads us to the critical decision of whether we want our grand-children to be free of or still living under this threat, because our aggressiveness or passivity at this moment in history will inevitably lead to one outcome or the other.  Although time remains an ally to both us and the Islamofascists, every moment we maintain our inbred incapacity to act strengthens their resolve because they correctly perceive in our fragmented front a lack of will to fight.

The results of the November elections will either advance and harden our will or undermine it because this is an astute adversary that understands the nature of warfare, whose first rule is that political indecisiveness is the precursor of defeat.

If there were a prize for intellectual fatuity, it would surely go to Professor George Lakoff of the University of California-Berkeley for his highly unpersuasive editorial that explored President Bush's use of the  phrase "stay the course."

It's a predictably academic exercise that is heavily freighted with tenuously extrapolated points, conclusions, and inferences, arguing that Mr. Bush's variations on the definition of the phrase betrays an inconstancy to truth and candor.  The professor quotes a University of Toronto study that purports to demonstrate the "power of metaphors," then links the phrase to "moral character," asserting the the president is implying he's a moral exemplar.

Those who have suffered through college courses with a bloviating pedant at the podium will recognize Professor Lakoff because he is as common on the American campus as beer and iconoclasm, and for some curious reason they believe their utterances are timeless jewels from heaven.  In fact, they are typically irrelevant and produce little in terms of consumable intelligence that has a longer shelf life than an opened bottle of wine.

He finishes his expose by admonishing the Democrats for not exploiting the lush political opportunities to tout their values by coining a phrase or catchword of their own creation.  Indulging a rare moment of cynicism, might we suggest something along the lines of "Committed to Defeat."

On a far more fascinating--and, credible--level is Gerard Baker of the London Times whose editorial plays on the use of the word "comma" by President Bush.  Apparently Mr. Bush had the temerity to say that history will judge our recent trials in Iraq as "a mere comma."  Mr. Baker dissects and analyzes precisely what kind of comma it will be, with the war's critics arguing it's one that

...represents a great dividing line in history's multi-clause sentence--the end, or the beginning of the end, of the American century.

He includes the inevitable degradation of America's "soft power," to the obvious delight of the U.S. liberal.  But all of these criticisms, he concludes, are overblown, exaggerated, or otherwise nonstarters, and they clearly tell us more about the critics than America.

His segue takes us to Robert Kagan's new book, Dangerous Nation, which argues that America has always been a threat to global stability.  Now, however, the U.S. is the unassailable super-power, militarily (it goes without saying), but also economically.  It's telling that the U.S. enjoys a quality of life almost unprecedented in history, with home ownership at 70 percent, and all economic indicators in the past fifty years at levels far above our nearest competitors, and for that we ought to be the envy of the free world but instead are the target of calumny.

For those on the left our singularly powerful status on the world stage is something to bemoan and for which we must apologize.  Indeed, every contemplated diplomatic move in the mind of the liberal must be so thorough vetted for possible cultural or political faux pas or unwitting affronts that we may as well precondition any assertion with the caveat that we'll summarily take it off the table should anyone object.

Lurking beneath that surface of skittishness is the left's deeply held belief that American exceptionalism is no longer applicable--or admissible--in our multi-cultural world because, in their view, the absolutes that historically informed American values were, in fact, artificial constructions designed to justify our imperialist instincts.

All of this can be laid at the doorstep of the post-modern sensibility that stipulates that the only value that exists is that which is imputed, that such quaint notions as the immanence of the soul or a God that will one day judge us, are expendable notions better suited to the dark days of our pre-Enlightenment past.

The presumption, of course, is that our current cultural and civic milieu, on which liberalism has left its indelible mark (stain?), is incomparably superior.  Yet the further one moves from that canvas the more obvious its plethora of failures and contradictions.  From its embrace of all forms of diversity save that of ideological diversity to the nearly 50 million innocents murdered in the womb, to the $6.6 trillion spent on President Johnson's "Great Society," to the cynical way in which they exploit the racial politics, not mention their threadbare but effective use of economic class warfare, contemporary liberalism is a full service disaster that never fails to meet our lowest expectations.

Although it has suffered at the hands of the left, American exceptionalism is far more resilient and hearty than anything in their effete arsenol.  That's because the values it embodies are timeless and the founding principles and rights that flow from them are self-evident and, crucially, they carry with them the mantle of God's authority.

U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) has been in Congress longer than many of you reading this have lived. His Congressional career began in 1955 and, ironically, he succeeded his father who represented the same district from 1933 to 1955. There's a maxim that suggests that longevity in government breeds bureaucratic stasis, lethargy, or indolence--take your pick.  Mr. Dingell is Exhibit A.

In an editorial that purports to argue that Mr. Dingell has a wellspring of palatable ideas, Thomas Bray seeks to distinguish him from the Pelosi, Rangel and Conyers arm of the party, and makes plain that if the Democrats take control of Congress, Mr. Dingell will likely become chairman of the "powerful" House Energy and Commerce Committee.

So, what are these cutting-edge ideas that Mr. Dingell believes Americans will flock to, if only graced with his leadership?  The first is incremental health care "reform" with the goal of a Canadian-style system. To put this in proper historical perspective and to further demonstrate that anachronisms aren't always obvious to their authors, Mr. Dingell's father first introduced this in the late 1930s, and Mr. Dingell himself has re-introduced it at the start of each Congressional session.

For the uninitiated, the Canadian health care system is something of an operational oxymoron and perhaps the strongest evidence of that is the fact that this year the government of Manitoba--the most conservative province in the nation--has allowed experimental health care projects that permit key elements of our private delivery system.  With the average time for a routine referral to a specialist taking 17 weeks and elective surgery more than 6 months, it's difficult to see why Mr. Dingell believes that kind of system would be viable in the U.S. where people complain about a few minutes of high-speed Internet down time.

Further, the U.S. system is slowly reforming itself via the marketplace, with costs being shifted to consumers and high-deductible policies becoming more prevalent.  An apt example is that we don't carry insurance for oil changes for our cars, only for major losses due to accidents; in health care, we should be paying for much or most of our routine care with our own pre-tax dollars using Health Savings Accounts.  Moreover, copays hitting $50 is an excellent disincentive for us to see our primary care physician for the proverbial sore throat, 92% of which are self-resolving.

On the commerce and finance end, Mr. Dingell would lobby for a "Manhattan Project" for energy, higher levies on food and drug companies to finance a more "active" FDA, free access to broadband digital service, and an end to unfair currency manipulation by Japan and China.  Beyond that, he will provide a surfeit of "oversight."

If you see in this policy prescription dramatically higher taxes and market-stifling regulation you have keen sense of insight.  Readers might wonder where Mr. Dingell has been for the past two decades as the Soviet Union crumbled and its former fiefdoms have begun transitioning to free-market nations.  Indeed, many Eastern European nations are rapidly becoming economic bellwethers for less developed countries that yearn for freedom and economic opportunity--perhaps someone should tap Mr. Dingell on the shoulder to wake him from his slumber.

There are certain economic realities--outsourcing comes to mind--that, as discomfiting as they are, most Americans recognize as inevitable.  Indeed, an oblique but demonstrable reason for some of the remarkable increase in the Dow Jones and NASDAQ is due to innumerable companies turning in record profits due to superior business management through out-sourcing.  Of course, that is not without the loss of jobs, but job creation has soared as well and many of those new positions command better salaries for qualified candidates.

The contrast of Mr. Dingell's time-warp agenda with that of the real world should serve to illustrate the importance of keeping him out of the chairmanship of any committee save that of his local liberal non-profit.  Further, if the presumably moderate Mr. Dingell would champion such misguided causes as outlined above, we can only imagine that the likes of Pelosi, Rangel, and Schumer are salivating at the prospect of regaining Congressional control.

Let's not let the nightmare of a Democratic--read, liberal--controlled Congress become a reality.  Support your local Republicans, financially and with your time. 

In a well-argued editorial Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and not a close ally of conservatives, makes the case for a measured disengagement from Iraq.  That stated, he is far less credible when he argues that Afghanistan, North Korea, and Iran, are "projects in peril."

As a predicate, we might ponder how a Democratic president might have handled the past six years.  It would plausibly start with significant tax increases (or, "investments," as they euphemistically refer to them), which would lead to economic stagnation, and finish with a reticence to use the full muscle of our counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism apparatus to combat the Islamofascists.

Therefore, the fact that we have blunted al-Qaeda's efforts globally and that a brutal dictator in the Middle East is no longer torturing his own people and threatening his neighbors should not be discounted.  Further, North Korea has learned that bilateral talks with the U.S. is a chimera of the Clinton era, and that China is the ultimate arbiter in terms of its continued viability, which only makes sense in quotes.  Finally, although Iran is a volatile and dangerous regime, the Security Council finds itself in the uncharacteristic position of having to provide meaningful consequences to its protracted intransigence.

Those points stipulated, there are important differences between "strategic disengagement" and "withdrawal," key among them is that the former doesn't telegraph a date certain by which American troops will leave Iraq.  To his credit, Mr. Holbrooke doesn't advocate a defined withdrawal but rather the latter, and, critically, a political solution.  Regardless of whether it's ever exercised, that's a potentially productive process that might elicit innovative ideas with respect to power sharing in Iraq. 

But the most persuasive argument, which he doesn't explore, places powerful incentives on the Iraqi government for leveraging deep controls over the religious clerics who wield virtually all the power and can, if motivated, reduce the violence and mayhem.  The core problem is highlighted by the fact that Iraq is a theocratic regime for whom a democratic form of government is not only foreign but frightening.

Mr. Holbrooke complains that "almost any advocate of a change in policy has been accused of wanting to 'cut and run.'"  That, of course, is not the case, but it is true that every policy recommendation from the Democrats has been tantamount to either a precipitous withdrawal or defining a date certain for such, and that is the height of strategic stupidity.

Indeed, the bipartisanship that the Holbrookes of the world yearn for is not possible when one-half of the equation--the Democrats--only offer transparently politically motivated policy recommendations that are not credible on their face.  True team work must start with real credibility and that means focusing on the shared goal of achieving relative stability in Iraq and degrading the Islamofascists to the point they are no longer a manifest threat.

Therefore, if the Democrats are serious about this they should disabuse themselves of the notion that President Bush's NSA surveillance program was a threat to Americans and that eliminating habeas corpus for non-citizen enemy combatants is a Constitutional travesty.

This enemy is real and if those on the left have doubts they might watch the video of Nick Berg being beheaded.  These barbarians have fundamentally rewritten the terms of military engagement, effectively taking us back a dozen or more centuries when, to borrow a line from Thomas Hobbes, life was "nasty, short, and brutish." 

More fundamental than the three choices Mr. Holbrooke outlined, we have, in fact, two:  The first is to fully understand the depth and breadth of this enemy, which presents a lethality wholly unprecedented in history; the second is to allow political motivations to underestimate the threat and fall back into a Clintonesque paradigm of endless negotiations, which amounts to relying on paper to defend the nation. 

It all comes down to a matter of which party can be trusted, and therefore, which is more credible.  Your choice will inevitably lead you to vote Republican or Democrat this election and the future of our Republic lies in the balance.

Historians have observed that time is the ultimate arbiter of each generation, which is to say that it is nearly impossible to contemporaneously appraise the import of seminal events with any certitude.

Such was the case in numerous battles in the Pacific during WWII, the example of Tarawa being particularly apt.  There were so many strategic blunders in that battle and many others that lengthy books have been written to chronicle them, and each one cost the lives of thousands of our soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines. Therefore, it's uniquely informative to read a brief but gripping editorial by Bill Gallo, who served in the Marines from 1942 to 1946.

He was at the battle of Iwo Jima which, after much blood and carnage, resulted in our brave marines raising the stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi. There was no way for those Marines nor their commanders to know how long their struggle would last, whether they would prevail, or, indeed, whether they would survive.  Indeed, they fought another 31 days before achieving victory.

But students of U.S. history will concur that there is virtually no evidence that even during such tenuous times when the outcome of a war was in question that Americans or their leaders demanded a date certain for withdrawal.

Indeed, although, as our great bard, Shakespeare, wrote, "Comparisons are odious," there are thematic similarities among all wars, perhaps most prominent among them is that it is rare to find a general or civilian commander willing to telegraph a deadline for the cessation of battle--at least not one who was ultimately victorious.

Another similarity is that in each war, from the Peloponnesian War to the Punic Wars, to Alexander the Great's tenuous triumph at Granicus, all the way to our Revolutionary War and those of the 20th century, the combatants were convinced that theirs was the most unprecedented and daunting in history.  Clearly, the weight and intensity of the moment makes that axiomatic.

Although the case can be made that some were bloodier than others--recall Agincourt--the motif that pervades them all is that of the uncertainty and fragility of their outcome.

Segue to our war in Iraq, which, by any measure, has been profoundly challenging.  There is no shortage of ostensibly legitimate reasons--or excuses--to draw down our troops and specify a date by which the U.S. will withdraw. 

But the one that countervails all of them is that even in this day and age when the quaint notion of honoring one's commitments has been so thoroughly discredited, were we to withdraw prior to having achieved a nominal level of stability, the United States would effectively cede a crucial victory to this barbaric enemy and its reputation would suffer a grievous and perhaps irredeemable injury.

For our Democratic brethren that may be an acceptable quid pro quo which, for transparently political reasons, appears to be their only alternative recommendation.  But the horrors of this war notwithstanding, when confronted with the implications of the Democrats' plans--which is never captured by the polls--most Americans understand that we must remain.

That's not to say we can't change our strategy, retool our tactics, or rethink the long-term plan--which should be integral to any war--only that we must recall that as frustrating as this war is, our goal, which is the chance for a fledgling democratic regime to take hold in the Middle East, is not only noble, it may represent the last best hope for that region.

Should the region come under the despotic control of the Islamofascists the fate of the United States and Europe would be in grave doubt.  The intellectually effete who argue that our invasion of Iraq has created and abetted the broader Islamic furor would do well to review modern history, from the start of the Iranian revolution to 9/11.  If a pattern fails to emerge they can count themselves among those immune to evidence, which renders their arguments at least suspect and arguably unsound.

One of the least attractive characteristics of human nature is our proclivity to avoid responsibility.  Whether it's in the world of business, politics, or war, and, in particular, when provided the cloak of anonymity, we tend to take the proverbial path of least resistance.  When the stakes are raised our more primordial instincts are invoked and, as unbecoming as it may be, we may well become cowards.

There is more than ample evidence that this generation has raised this phenomenon to a kind of perverse art form or dark science because we seemed to have at once ignored the lessons of untold centuries and acquired the least effective tools for dealing with the timeless challenges of life, from child-rearing to waging wars.

As we approach the November elections we must eschew the seductive urge to sacrifice the chance for long-term success--known as 'victory' in military parlance--for the false security of a withdrawal timetable.  The most meaningful challenges we face in life rarely have easy answers and it's only those who habitually avoid them who are unaware of that fact. 

We must take candid inventory of our predicament and choose leaders who understand the seriousness of this war against the Islamofascists, those who have pledged to safeguard our Republic and its strategic interests.  When juxtaposing the candidates from our two parties, it's unambiguously clear that only the Republicans have demonstrated the resolve and resiliency to prevail.

As we approach the November elections, the plethora of negative news for Republicans, from Congressional ethical lapses to our chronic problems in Iraq, may understandably discourage otherwise clear thinking conservatives.

That can lead to the pessimistic internal dialogue we've all been prey to on occasion, which amounts to the blunt calculation that our own vote will make no appreciable difference in this election.  Yet, it's at those very moments in the political season when we must reanimate our sense of civic duty and, more critically, make a candid assessment of the kind of post-election landscape we may wake up to on November 8th. 

Bloggers at Townhall.com received a link to a site that provides detailed information concerning a slate of candidates that Republicans should be supporting.  You are strongly encouraged to review that site and exploits the information and data it provides, and then vote accordingly. 

As an elected official, your editor is keenly aware that the margin of less than one percent can mean the difference between having an "R" as opposed to a "D" next to the name of the winner.  As much as conservative Republicans have been acutely frustrated with this administration, from spending to immigration, there is only one thing worse than a Republican who doesn't fully meet our expectations--and that's any Democrat.

Here in Colorado's 5th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Jay Fawcett is mounting a serious challenge to Republican Doug Lamborn, in a way that hasn't happened in decades.  Mr. Fawcett is a recent translpant who has never held elected office, but he's also a retired military officer who is adroit at disguising himself as a moderate, but when the surface is scratched he bleeds a bright liberal blue.

In contrast, Mr. Lamborn, is a former president of the Colorado Senate and staunch and reliable conservative.  But because of the political scene nationally, many Independents are considering a vote for Mr. Fawcett.  This scenario is playing itself out nationwide, but there is also evidence that local issues will trump the national problems which have been so effectively sensationalized by the liberals at the helm of our mainstream media.

But that can only happen if Republicans of all stripes recognize what is truly at stake and talk to their families, friends, and colleagues, and head out to the polls.  It's difficult to recall a time when more was on the line, from keeping the economic momentum trending positively by making President Bush's tax cuts permanent to aggressively pursuing the Islamofascists and taking a hard line with Iran and North Korea.

Their carefully orchestrated window dressing notwithstanding, there is no question that the Democrats would abolish the tax cuts and revert to the Clintonesque diplomatic paradigm of interminable talks with North Korea and Iran, with no hint of consequences, which would only guarantee their inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Therefore, please reflect seriously on what we're facing and ponder, if only fleetingly, the headline that might read, "Speaker Pelosi Takes the Reigns," then get out and vote.

The quintessence of political bitterness is embodied in the person of Molly Ivins whose editorial today betrays a remarkable depth of angst and perplexity over the fate of the Democrats in next month's election. 

Demonstrating that the half-life of stupidity among the left is best measured in eons, Ms. Ivins compares the war in Iraq to WWII, stunned that we have been in there almost as long as it took to fight all of WWII.  She also states that she is "infuriated" because he [Vice President Dick Cheney] won't "level with us," with respect to our situation in Iraq.

From there she takes us on a tour of the electoral college and the peculiarities of the popular vote and how all of this bodes poorly for the  Democrats. 

All of this is to support her overarching theme that her political clairvoyance is not resonating with the Democratic base, which, in her view, is panicking now that we're within weeks of the election.  The reason?  The Washington Press Corps is out of touch with America and, of course, the Republicans have more cash.

Although no one can know with certainty and a straight face the outcome of the election, there are political barometers in the nation that point to a rough repeat of 2004, which is the ghost that is lingering over Ms. Ivins' head.  She and her ilk have the unenviable reputation for consistently misreading the country's mood, which amounts to a misappraisal of the key issues and how they'll impact voters.

This, in turn, reflects the shocking degree to which the left has migrated outside the parameters of mainstream America because their analyses are always a reliable echo of their own self-referential voices.  As the poet, W.B. Yeats, wrote in an entirely different context, they are "Monuments to their own magnificence."

It simply astounds the Ivins of the world that there remains in this Republic an incredibly resilient set of bedrock values that, our wayward culture notwithstanding, hearkens back to a time that most Americans recall as vastly superior to our Brave New World. 

Indeed, the liberal's disdain of authority, its distrust of government, its obvious malign attitudes towards the military, its arrogant indifference to the unborn, and its cold embrace racial politics, make it pre-eminently out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans.

Therefore, as the election approaches and Ivins and her winnowing clique blame the fund-raising advantages enjoyed by Republicans or the Potomac media, which is presumably out-of-touch, the outcome will, in fact, once again be determined by the most primordial instincts in human beings:  Security, physical and economic.

So, let's venture out on that proverbial limb and ask:  Which party comes to mind when the issues of national security and economic savviness are raised?

This morning on CSPAN featured interviews with Powerline's Paul Mirengoff and Christy Hardin Smith of FireDogLake.com.  The latter perfectly crystallized the left's positions with respect the profound issues facing the U.S., from Iraq to the new habeas corpus law. 

Most telling was Ms. Hardin Smith's fundamental mischaracterization of the content of the habeas corpus law which she described in predictably incandescent rhetoric as an abdication of Constitutional responsibility.  It took several minutes before Mr. Mirengoff made the salient point that the law doesn't apply to American citizens, and moreover, that the enemy combatants in our custody are paradoxically being afforded more rights than WWII prisoners of war.

But, as a caller to the program articulated, were we to listen to the likes of Ms. Hardin Smith, al-Qaeda terrorists would be afforded their day in court, which would guarantee a circus-like jurisprudential atmosphere that would make Saddam's trial look positively credible.

Upon reflecting on the core beliefs and values of people such as this one is moved to a rare combination of pity and perplexity, the former because their capacity to so fundamentally misconstrue world events is indeed pitiful, and the latter because it staggers the imagination since it requires such an exquisitely misguided sense of judgment.

How, indeed, can one look at the unprecedented nature of this enemy and not conclude that it demands a radically different legal and military paradigm?  One answer to the left's curious thinking is that it does perfectly comport with so-called 'international opinion,' and, as such, enjoys the kind of support they so desperately crave. 

If we were sufficiently brave to gaze into the inner recesses of their thinking we would find that the intellectual framework that drives it is imbued with such noxious notions as the moral equivalence of all nations and cultures.  A deeper glimpse would reveal the left's axiomatic view that aggressors and belligerents are merely the world's oppressed who are revolting against alleged imperialists such as the U.S. who are exploiting them for their own cynical economic gain.

In their kaleidoscopic world our arch enemy is merely angry and frustrated at the West and if we only understood that we would agree to sit down and reason with them.  In short, they're just as misunderstood as the common criminals that fill our prisons and for whom the left has a nearly limitless compassion, certainly far more than they have for their voiceless victims.

Somewhere in the past several decades, when the rest of us moved into adulthood and achieved a nominal understanding of history, in particular, that evil is a timeless foe that reappears in different but equally lethal guises, and that there are, indeed, easily distinguishable differences among the world's nations and cultures, our brethren on the left stagnated and remained caught in an anachronistic web of their own design.

Although they are welcome to remain there, Republicans must make the case that these are not people with serious ideas and values, certainly not people equipped to take the reigns of this great nation at a time of such manifest peril. 

At no time in our history is so much at stake and if the left is incapable of recognizing that and supporting policy decisions that reflect that reality, they must not be trusted in leadership positions. 

The interview this morning with Ms. Hardin Smith provided convincing evidence for this argument.  We can only pray that common sense is also a timeless phenomenon and that mainstream Americans will vote accordingly next month.

For a glimpse into a veritable Looking Glass world, we offer you Patrick Buchanan's editorial that effectively rationalizes America's self-charted demise.  Political analysts can disagree about the wisdom or aptness of President Bush's use of the phrase "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union Address, because, strictly speaking, an "axis" connotes complicity and coordination, and there is very little evidence of that among Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

But the rhetorical conventions that inform political speeches momentarily aside, most Americans understood the meaning of the phrase, which, simply stated, is that those three regimes constitute the last and most lethal threat to the civilized world. 

Mr. Buchanan seems to inhabit a world where apparent inevitabilities--such as a nuclearized Iran or North Korea--are viewed through a prism of denial and attenuation:

When the United States invaded Iraq, North Korea and Iran got the message.  Both accelerated their nuclear programs.

When confronted with refractory and dangerous foes such as North Korea and Iran, the U.S. is better served by a policy that clarifies--as early as possible--its intent to prohibit them from developing a nuclear capability.  That the U.S. squandered the 90s with a Clintonean treaty that only bought North Korea more time to develop its program is persuasive evidence that protracting rather than abbreviating the time line is ill-advised, to put it charitably.

That is why it's vital that President Bush and our allies present a seamless front against North Korea, and why SoS Rice's assertion today that the U.S. would defend Japan without reservation, is of absolute importance. 

Behavior management for these rogue regimes must amount to serious diplomacy with manifest and credible threats looming in the wings.  If Mr. Buchanan is so thoroughly convinced in the benign intent of these despots that he is willing to gamble by opening diplomatic channels, he is much further along his self-ordained path to political oblivion than anyone could have imagined.

His singularly misinformed editorial closes with a forced comparison of Kim Jong Il's regime to those of Stalin and Mao, which necessitates that we ignore Kim's uniquely powerful position of one day operating the most prolific underground nuclear arms dealership in the world. 

The "bellicose bluster" that Mr. Buchanan disdains is a pejorative characterization of President Bush's policy of rapidly appraising pre-nascent threats based on their potential to become manifestly unmanageable.  When the threat is deemed to warrant aggressive action it correctly triggers the full range of diplomatic options to include economic sanctions and interdiction of supplies, with the most meaningful bargaining chip--military action--breathing down the necks of these tyrants.

It's the only language they understand, and were we to listen to the likes of Mr. Buchanan we would naively welcome these belligerents into the fold of the civilized world, and wait for the day when they have become such a regional or global threat that avoiding a direct and dangerous confrontation is simply not possible.

What is especially alarming is that his characterization and prescriptions for our current challenges is remarkably similar to that of many Democrats.  Curious bedfellows, indeed.

Whenever the party in power begins to spin its wheels and thereby loses political traction, we can be guaranteed to hear petitions to reanimate the platform with new ideas.  Such is the case with Cal Thomas' editorial today which suggests a Republican-authored initiative to lift people out of poverty.

Although fresh ideas should always be welcome to reinvigorate a party's message and to rekindle grass-roots electoral interest, we would be smart to remember that there are two primary reasons that a party's ideas lose their electoral sheen:  First, it is often the case that the ideas have failed to resonate because the message is being suffocated by other news, and second, the party in power begins to mirror its opponents because they unwisely attribute their attenuating support to them, rather to their passionless appeals.  In the case of the Republicans, they have sustained not one but both injuries.

Any attempts to correct these missteps must begin with the embarrassing spending spree under President Bush.  Since Republicans have always been the party of fiscal austerity, relying on the individual rather than the government for success, the GOP should launch a message campaign that re-establishes their party as the one of strong financial principles.

Beginning with a demand for pay-as-you-go legislation which includes programs or expenditures to eliminate with new legislation, Republicans can bring a desperately needed credibility to their legacy as fiscal guardians of taxpayers' hard earned dollars.  As it is, when President Bush included in his recent appeal to voters a 'tough line on spending' it was only the ignorant or politically daft who believed him.

As the cliche goes, 'ideas matter,' and if the GOP wants to be the party of ideas it must begin by performing a self-imposed housecleaning by taking inventory of how poorly it has acquitted itself in recent years.  Since the party has always been the unquestioned exemplar in terms of national security, it should lose no time in making that the centerpiece of its justification for continued leadership.  Indeed, the left's astounding naivete with respect to its stern condemnations of the president's NSA surveillance programs, his tough methods of interrogations of non-citizen enemy combatants, not to mention its remarkably obtuse calls for withdrawal from Iraq, have effectively dubbed Democrats the party of defeat.

Finally, with federal tax receipts up a combined 26 percent since 2004, Republicans should tout the president's tax cuts as the most reliable guarantor of economic success across the board.  When Democrats talk about tax cuts for the middle class Republicans should remind them that the bottom 50 percent of wage-earners pay just 4.6 percent of federal income taxes, and that Mr. Bush's tax cuts provided meaningful tax relief for mid-to-upper middle class earners, while removing millions of lower-income workers entirely from the tax-rolls.

Although the profound ethical lapses by Republicans will cause damage it's impossible to estimate their full impact.  Most prognosticators believe damage will be minimal because, as Tip O'Neill famously quipped, "All politics is local," which will result in issues specific to congressional districts holding sway.

Because their ideas are not in sync with average Americans, Democrats are always running from their message and find convenient, if awkward ways to disguise them.  Let them attempt to get the ear of American electorate because when forced to articulate a concrete plan it either sounds like a Republican idea or it stumbles clumsily off the delivery truck causing an unsightly political mess.

The politics of ideas should convince us that while the packaging of ideas is important, Republicans should avoid the misguided marketing of them, preferring rather to use candor and passion to make their case.  In general, Republicans are at their best as champions of the man in the street with simple ideas that illustrate the value of individual effort, perseverance, and the power that low taxation and regulation can provide.

If they focus on that message they can minimize the friendly fire and collateral damage of their own ill-advised efforts to curry political favor and in doing so can retain Congressional control.

Editor's note:  The letter below was submitted to the Wall Street Journal in response to an article concerning Iran and North Korea.
 
The Wall Street Journal

To the editor: 

A nation’s diplomatic challenges are either mitigated or exacerbated by the effectiveness of its historical foreign policy, and there is no question that our current predicament with North Korea can be traced to the Clinton Administration’s thoroughly naïve policy of bilateral negotiations (“North Korea’s Nuclear Claim May Help U.S. Efforts on Iran,” Oct. 10). 

Each generation is faced with the grim reality that its demons will emerge from a circumstantial mist that effectively shrouds them in ambiguity.  Although it may be argued that North Korea and Iran were in incubational periods for many years, the most effective policy presciently creates strategic disincentives for would-be belligerents to inhibit unpredictable behavior.  In that regard, to say we have missed opportunities in the past two decades with these rogue states is a gross understatement. 

However, a foreign policy’s potency is also limited by political realities and unless a despotic nation becomes a manifest threat, the policy’s effectiveness typically lags, which, paradoxically, only encourages a belligerent such as North Korea. 

That the challenges of Iran and North Korea have materialized at a time when the collective resolve of the civilized world is at its nadir, and when the capacity to recognize evil in our midst can be charitably called suboptimal, only renders the outcome more tenuous and uncertain. 

When we unscramble the political realities, it’s abundantly evident that unless the U.S. takes a strong leadership position to leverage these tyrants into compliance the world will witness the 21st century version of 1938, with the notable difference that these adversaries will bring to this battle the most lethal weapon known to mankind.

In an editorial that provides absolute, if belated strategic clarity to our flawed foreign policy concerning rogue states, former speech writer for President Bush and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, David Frum makes the argument that the time for interminable diplomacy has long passed.

Mr. Frum outlines a multi-faceted program that at once isolates rogue regimes and effectively forces them to act in their own self-interest, which, given the stern set of incentives and disincentives he recommends, means they will no longer pose a threat to the civilized world.

What has become painfully obvious to those with even a modicum of understanding of history is that we have entered a new chapter in international affairs, one where the potential for an outlaw regime to obtain a nuclear weapon has never been greater.  That threat dwarfs the threat that the Cuban missile crisis posed because these this latest iteration of totalitarian states are led by unpredictable zealots who are absolutely willing to sacrifice their citizens to satisfy their hegemonic ambitions.

The regional players in each scenario are critical, but none more so than in the case of North Korea, which is the textbook example.  We must isolate that dark regime and leverage meaningful support from China, and encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and develop its own arsenal.

President Bush is the transitional U.S. leader on whose watch this new chapter opened, beginning as it did with the horrors of 9/11.  But it has blossomed into the expanded threat of two of his three Axis of Evil members seriously threatening the U.S. or its interests. 

Diplomacy is crucial, and although Mr. Bush is pursuing multi-party talks with North Korea and is using regional influence in the Middle East to bring Iran into compliance, we simply don't have the decade it took us to get tough with Iraq before we take action against this sea of troubles.

Indeed, we must telegraph to these fascist dictators that the diplomatic time-line for their compliance will be dramatically truncated and that they can expect an aggressive program of severe sanctions for anything less than full compliance.

We can already hear our brethren on the left lamenting the "cowboy" diplomacy tactics of the Bush Administration, but their specious argument won't have traction because Mr. Bush's approach stipulates a robust coalition of negotiating partners.  But in order to exploit everything possible from our diplomatic efforts, we must have a transparent set of sanctions looming in the back ground, and, as Frank Gaffney argued yesterday on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, the threat of military action against North Korea must be on the table.

Without inculpating the Clinton Administration, the U.S. has blundered in its efforts to keep North Korea from obtaining a nuclear weapon.  We cannot let Iran become the second domino and therefore both of these nations must be put in the international community's cross-hairs to demonstrate its unambiguous resolve.

Pathetically, we can expect as much push-back from our liberals at home as we can from the Europeans, and from China and Russia, each of which has a stake in North Korea and Iran, respectively. 

In order to frame the situation in a manner certain to convince all but the intellectually challenged, President Bush must clarify that nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue regimes is not something the free world can tolerate.  First, they can threaten and black mail their neighbors, and second, they can export such weapons to any number of terrorist organizations, all of which would have the U.S. and its Western allies in their sights.

Our options are therefore few and they all involve major sacrifice and risk.  But the only option that is riskier is inaction, which, the left's adroit polemics to the contrary notwithstanding, is what we could expect from them should they assume control of Congress.

Every generation has a unique set of challenges and it's axiomatic that as those challenges emerge from the mist of intense and rapidly evolving circumstances, only the most principled and prescient among us will understand in real-time what is at stake.

His many short-comings aside, President Bush has the capacity to understand this and history will one day vindicate his actions and his insistence that this is a multi-front war, a war that will supremely test the resolve of the civilized nations of the world. 

The outcome is not certain, but we do know what is at stake, and that is the future of the Western world.

Check any news or commentary web site and you'll be inundated with editorials lamenting the prospective demise of the GOP's control of Congress.  The more optimistic among them have already conceded the House, the more pessimistic have both houses in Democratic control.

Conventional wisdom, which is often little more than artful tea-leaf reading, has it that the Evangelicals are migrating to the Democrats because they are so viscerally upset about Iraq.  Friday's Washington Post had this article which explored that very phenomenon, using a bevy of polling data to bolster its argument.  It concluded with a warning that although religious conservatives might feel disenfranchised with the GOP that may not redound to the Democrats; rather, it might mean they'll just sit out this election.

Political prognostications are easy to make but even among the most astute they are wrong as much or more than they are right.  That's why it's difficult to see in the surfeit of analyses and projections any substantive or credible voice, because not unlike a large school of fish they move like one giant organism, but their direction often seems uncharted, more the product of group-think than plausible insights.

Stipulating that most Republicans understand that we are, in fact, engaged in a war, both in Iraq and the broader war against the Islamofascists, proverbial issues that Democrats list as drivers in this election--jobs, health care, minimum wage, etc.--will, as the election looms, recede into the distant horizon. 

For one thing, with unemployment at 4.6 percent, the issue of jobs is one that is largely unassailable, because we're at effective full employment.  With respect to income, it takes a leap of liberal faith to believe that with their predilection for across the board taxation--we mean "investment," of course--that the cost of doing business will be reduced should the Democrats assume control of Congress.  Indeed, President Bush's unflattering record on spending aside, reduced regulation and downward pressure on corporate taxes and the capital gains tax remain the hallmarks of Republican leadership. 

On the health care front, more people recognize that the way to expand access is to reduce costs, which means reducing utilization, and that means having patients assume a greater share of the real costs.  As anyone with a commercial health plan can attest, that's been happening.  The result is that health care costs as a percent of GDP are moving downward, albeit slowly. 

Further, the alternative is to have the Democrats take charge, a la Hillary-Care, which would be a single-payer system in the remarkably unsuccessful vein of Canada or Great Britain's system, where, in the case of the former, it takes 17 weeks for a routine referral to a specialist, and elective knee surgery takes 8 months.

When we examine these polls internals we see that many religious conservative are "mad" about the war in Iraq.  That, of course, tells us nothing of substance in terms of whether they believe the Democrats' plan--to the extent it's been disclosed, which is obliquely at best--would be any more successful.  Indeed, from the Murtha nostrum of "cut-and-run," to the Kerry, "over the hill redeployment," their recommendations lack the adult-like seriousness we might expect during times of war.

Add to this mix the fact that pro-life Democrats are virtually non-existent as well as those who believe in the host of other socially conservative causes, and the result is that, polls notwithstanding, there is every reason to believe the Republican base will ultimately pull the lever for those on the right.

Leadership during times when American military personnel are being killed is always fraught with a tenuousness that provides almost no confidence when elections are in the offing, primarily because there are no quick or easy solutions during challenging wars.

This time is no different, yet when Americans reflect on the real options before them, in terms of which candidates are more credible, and they recall that it was the Democrats who voted in droves against the NSA surveillance program as well as interrogations efforts for non-citizen military combatants to gain intelligence to mitigate the risk of a homeland attack, it's hard to believe that their gut will tell them the Democrats are more likely to protect them.

The past is prologue and despite the Republicans' many gaffs, missteps, and foibles, the choices have actually never been more obvious or distinct.  So, let the prognosticators and pundits issue their bromides and nuanced scenarios--the peculiarities of the American voter are simply too complex to be rendered in poll-based analyses, as the past two elections can attest.

The most cogent analysis is the one that adduces Occam's Razor:  America is at war and reason dictates that we will look to the party that will provide the best protection.  Is there any question which party that is?