The Redhunter

Sean Hannity today offered his congratulations and then said "we want the new president to succeed." If I could have called, I would have asked him "succeed at what?"

Here is a partial list of some of what Obama wants to do

• Employee Free Choice Act
• Fairness Doctrine
• Freedom of Choice Act
• Nationalization of health care
• Estate tax increases
• "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" (driver's licenses for illegals)
• Capital gains tax increases
• Defense cuts
• Liberal judicial appointments
• Racial and ethnic preferences
• Income tax increases
• Bans on oil drilling
• Global poverty tax/Kyoto

To which I can add

• Gay marriage
• International Criminal Court
• National "hate speech" legislation
• Reversal of DC vs.Keller (gun case)
• National gun control or even confiscation
• National "volunteer corps whose real function is political agitation
• Pandering to everything but the most radical forms of Islam
• Redistribution of wealth
• A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq
• Skyrocketing prices for electricity

Less likely, but not impossible, are prosecutions of Bush Administration officials like Don Rumsfeld for "war crimes."

Sorry, but I can't sign on for these things.

Contrary to what some readers might think, I'm not universally critical of recent Democrat presidents.

Sean Hannity seems to assume that he and Obama share the same goals for America, but only have different ways they want to get there. I do not think this is the case. Obama has a radically different idea of what America means, what type of nation we are, and what we should be. I don't even think he thinks of himself as an American in the traditional sense, but more as a "world citizen."

The biggest mistake many people make when thinking about things like retirement benefits or health care is that they see it as a giant math problem. They assume that there is a "solution" that we can discover if only we get enough experts together. This is false because much the issue is values based. I do not think that you have a right to health care coverage from the government.

A Fundamental Change

Make no doubt, whether the people who voted for Obama know it or not, this election represents a fundamental rejection of America as we have known it since colonial times. The damage Obama will do to our country will for the most part be permanent, or at least not fixable for several generations. This is not a question of the economy tanking, although it will. Nor is this an issue of a loss of U.S. power and prestige overseas, although that will happen too. We are on the road to a Western European, or dirigisme style relationship between government and business.

Finally, it's not a question of this or that policy or law being put into place.

The rejection I am talking about is about the relationship between the citizen and the government. It's about how much the government should be involved in the economy. It's about what constitutes a "right," and about what the government owes it's citizens. It's about whether the Constitution means anything other than procedure and the dates when we vote, and whether judges can twist it to suite their political agendas. It's about our role in the world, and whether we will remain truly sovereign or whether we'll cede most of it to international institutions. And of course it's about traditional values or forcing the new values of the radical left on all us whether we like it or not. It's also about free speech, and whether we'll follow the path of Western Europe, most nations of which restrict what their citizens can say to a degree greater than what most Americans realize.

Supreme Court justices are on the bench for decades. Once universal health care is out of the bag, you can't take it back. Once gay marriage is instituted, you can't cancel it. If Ronald Reagan couldn't even keep his campaign promise to eliminate what was then the new pipsqueek Department of Education, what makes anyone think we can dismantle what Obama creates?

Maybe even worse, Obama's election could signal the beginning of the end of the U.S. as a world power. Modern liberals in general don't like U.S. power, and think that we should be more beholden to what agreements we can get from the "international community" before acting. The idea of the U.S. as the leader of the world strikes them as "arrogant." They always want to cut military spending, which is necessary even for "soft power" projection. The war they claim they want to fight is always the one we're not actually engaged in. When we are in one their ability to stick it out is pathetic.

Making It Permanent

Further, conservatives and Republicans need to understand that this is not 1976, and if we only bide our time we can "re-elect" Ronald Reagan in 2012 or a GOP Congress in 2010 as we did in 1994. Neither of these scenarios is as likely to occur now as they did then.

For one thing, Obama might prove just popular enough to get reelected in 2012. He may not totally wreck the economy, or precipitate a foreign policy disaster. More to the point, it just might be that a majority of Americans really do want a socialist cradle-to-grave system.

Further, this time the Democrats will take measures to make their relections permanent too. Groups like ACORN Planned Parenthood, et al will receive a steady stream of federal funding. The left has learned a lot in recent years, and they're not interested in giving up their power. Byron York documented their various organizations in the wake of the 2004 election in his book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, and predicted that they would be back the next time with a vengeance. He was right.

The Democrats will encourage more illegal immigration through the promise of benefits, and "amnesty" for illegals already here. They will push through changes in state laws so that felons can vote. A

Remember also that we will have redistricting in 2010. With Democrats in such control everywhere they'll be able to gerrymander districts like never before.

The purpose of all of this is to keep their majority for as long as possible.

I could be wrong about all this, but I don't think I am.

Sarah Palin

Although this post is not per se about the future of conservatism or the GOP, I do want to say a few things about the Governor of Alaska.

Let's get one thing out of the way real fast; Sarah Palin did not "drag down" John McCain. McCain would have done worse had he selected any of the other presidential contenders as his running mate. As someone who is quite active in the local GOP, and who follows these things intimately on a national level, I am telling you that the only reason McCain had much of any support from the party at all was Sarah Palin. Conservatives were decidedly unenthusiastic about his candidacy, and if most of us were going to do anything at all it was because we didn't like Barack Obama, not because we liked John McCain. Sarah Palin fired up the base and at least gave us a fighting chance.

Sarah Palin faced an insanely biased media that treated her as a Dan Quayle from the get go. Barack Obama also faced an insanely biased media, but one that covered for him and his running mate at every turn. That Palin faced this with grace, style, and humor shows her good and steadfast character.

Palin and others like her, such as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Senator Tom Coburn (OK) are, I hope, the future of the GOP.

They represent clean government and new ideas. Best of all, all the right people hate them. That they're portrayed as "too religious" or some such means that they must be doing something right.

Stay In the Arena

Not to worry, though, because despite the pessimism of my post, I don't give up. If anything Obama has inspired me to work and fight harder than ever for my ideals.

As such, I think I'll end with the words Theodore Roosevelt that are especially appropriate for this moment

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."