Where to now?

The Democrats swept the country in the sixth year of the Bush presidency, taking back at least one house of Congress and a number of governorships. The Senate hangs in the balance.

Republicans lost all across America, in an election that was nationalized. Much as the 1994 election brought Republicans into power in Congress after half a century of Democrat rule, the Democrats now take charge after 12 years. The difference is in 1994 the Republicans ran on the reformist Contract with America. What is the Democrat platform? Largely a negative--- the anti-Bush party.

The key question for Republicans is the lesson they take from this debacle. Will they think they need to move to the squishy moderate middle? The answer is no. Part of the sentiment that the country was moving in the wrong direction came from the conservative base of the Republican party. I started my blog Backyard Conservative this January because of my outrage over earmarks. The fact that the Republican Congress oversaw an explosion in earmarks allied with runaway spending alienated small government conservatives. Republicans did make some reforms, but not nearly enough. The Bush tax cuts, which led to real economic growth, were a plus. But they were only part of the Ownership Society platform the President championed but later too easily abandoned, coupled with lack of support in Congress. Individual accounts and Social Security reform stalled. Medical Savings Accounts were limited. The boondoggle prescription drug benefit created a new unsustainably expensive entitlement in health care, undermining conservative support, yet not buying enough votes from the mushy middle to compensate. No Child Left Behind didn’t go far enough in enabling parental choice for excellence in education, and the provisions that did help a few inner city children weren’t consistently enforced.

Some Democrat winners say they want to work in a bipartisan manner for reform. We shall see how that turns out, given their shrill leadership in Nancy Pelosi, and their aging far left liberals who will head committees. My guess is they will spend more time mired in the past trying to rewrite history, than in looking toward the future, and to solutions.

Now we turn to the war. The Democrats would like to view Iraq in a vacuum and lock it into the Vietnam template. They say we have failed in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam. But the loss in Vietnam came after a Democrat Congress cut off funds to our troops and to our ally there. We did buy time for the now successful Asian Tiger countries to emerge, but there was a bloodbath of millions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those who had placed their hope in a fledgeling democracy paid with their lives. Democrats do the same in Iraq at our peril. For as Sen. John McCain, who suffered as a POW in Vietnam, has pointed out---the Vietcong did not follow us here---the terrorists will. And as we know, some are already here. Some we have found and foiled. We have to assume there are others here who wish us harm. That is why we need to have the tools to be able to focus surveillance on potential terrorists so we can break up their plots in time---tools which have thankfully been voted into law. Democrats overwhelmingly voted against these common sense measures to protect us at home from catastrophic death.

Democrats are always looking for a better war to prove their commitment to our national security. Most Democrats opposed the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded little Kuwait. That war had the support of a multinational force, most of the Middle East and the UN, and the Democrats were still opposed. They grudgingly approved the war in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11^th, but not going after Saddam Hussein, who was uncontainable in the new post-Sept. 11^th era of asymmetrical warfare. Hussein had invaded his neighbors, had used chemical weapons on them and his own people, and had harbored and financed terrorists. Now Democrats say Iraq is distracting us from North Korean nuclear development, but offer no solutions beyond the appeasement they indulged in during the Clinton years. And what is the Democrat solution for Iran, who has openly threatened Israel with destruction?

Democrats will finally have to take responsibility for our foreign policy, for which the war in Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. Will Democrats step up? They purged Joe Lieberman from the party this year over the war. Lieberman had been one of their party standard bearers, their Vice Presidential candidate not so long ago. Will they honor him as a statesman, now that he has won as an Independent?

I don’t think so.

The debate will now unfold in the 2008 presidential campaign. It’ll be the next Red State-Blue State battle. I’m in an outpost of Red in a Blue state. My congressman, Republican Mark Kirk, was reelected in a Blue State despite the Blue wave. It’ll be interesting.