Right Minded Online

First, Jim Cooper did not have a conservative opponent. The candidate occupying the Republican line on the ballot was Scott Knapp, a mixed-bag who had few conservative credentials. Knapp lists the #1 issue in our district as “energy policy,” and on Iraq, Knapp’s viewpoint descends into the pessimism of a liberal.

He states “I do not think we should have gone to war in Iraq. Now that we’re there, we’ve got to do something. I’m not 100% sure what. I think it will deteriorate into chaos. Let it go back to what it used to be, three separate countries. Let the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis have their section. Hopefully, we’ll get along with the Kurds, best-case scenario the Shiites won’t hate us, and the Sunnis are probably a lost cause.”

On the Bush tax cuts, Knapp also apparently reads from the DNC’s talking points, stating “If [Bush] wants to make them permanent, he needs to find where to cut the spending.” Knapp is correct in his argument that government spends too much, but he ignores the positive effect tax cuts have on the economy and revenue collections.

Therefore, as a conservative, one had to turn to Jim Cooper to see what he offered.

Mr. Cooper, who is a little more grounded in reality, lists the #1 issue in our district as “a tie between the war and jobs.” Although Cooper does not agree with the President on Iraq, he still has the sensible outlook that “It’s no good looking backward. We need to support our troops and try to get them home safely and as quickly as possible.”

The American Conservative Union has given Jim Cooper a 36 rating (out of 100) based on his voting record. That’s more liberal than conservative, but among Cooper’s fellow Tennessee Democrat congressmen, he’s more conservative than Bart Gordon and Harold Ford, Jr., and more liberal than Lincoln Davis and John Tanner.

Despite his rating, Jim Cooper has hit several home runs. He was one of only 36 House Democrats who voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and one of 62 Democrats who voted for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. This is huge.

In addition, Jim Cooper was one of 48 House Democrats who voted for the American Jobs Creation Act, which extended three components of the Bush tax cuts: easing the marriage penalty, creating a 10% tax bracket on the bottom end of the income scale, and doubling the per child tax credit to $1,000.

He voted against Gun Manufacturer Liability, which would have allowed negligence lawsuits against gun manufacturers, sellers, and trade associations when criminals use firearms illegally. Cooper also voted for Class Action Lawsuit Reform, a bill that moves many national class-action lawsuits out of local and state courts and into federal courts in order to stop “court shopping.”

Congressman Cooper voted for a “Death Tax” repeal, which makes permanent the now-temporary repeal of the death tax on family inheritances and businesses passed in 2001. He voted against using taxpayer funds to pay for overseas abortions, voted in support of saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, and voted against the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

All of these are conservative votes on high-profile legislation, and in almost all cases, Jim Cooper bucked the Democrat Party’s position. No, Jim Cooper is not a conservative, but that he willing to go against his party and vote conservative on legislation that is of paramount importance to conservatives earned Mr. Cooper a Right-Minded vote this year.

Conservatives agree that our philosophy succeeds whenever it’s applied, and it shouldn’t matter who applies it. Conservatism works for Democrats as well as conservatives. Honest conservatives aren’t afraid to lift substance over style, and adhere to ideology more than a political party. This means that sometimes it’s okay for a conservative to vote Democrat.

I agree that it is the job of a leader to make the first overtures toward reconciliation following such a bitter political campaign in which the stakes were enormously high. But who are the Democrats, who were buried even deeper into minority status this election, to tell the majority party and its head what it must now do?

It would be nice if the President could reach across the aisle and bring all of his political opponents into the fold, and some will no doubt be willing to accept the olive branch, but it’s naive and foolhardy to expect political peace to replace the vehemence that has marked Bush’s first term and the campaign that produced his re-election.

Consider that prior to the November 2 election, the left spread fear and panic regarding the substance of a second Bush term. Indeed, hysterical Bush-haters were predicting a repeal of civil rights laws and a return to Jim Crow, an end to Social Security checks, money being taken directly out of the pockets of the middle class and into the hoards of the wealthy, legalization of rape, a right-wing theocracy, more destructive hurricanes, etc., even though there is nothing remotely similar to these fanatical predictions in the GOP’s agenda or its track record.

It is incumbent upon a political victor to try to make peace with his opponents, for sure, but beware when the left begins demanding that President Bush and his fellow conservatives initiate “healing.” What they really mean is that the GOP capitulate its own agenda and adopt theirs in the name of bipartisanship. We’re simply not gonna do it. It’s been tried, and got us nowhere.

President Bush received 51% of the popular vote, the GOP controls 55% of the Senate, and 53-54% of the House of Representatives, depending on the outcome of three undecided races. There’s a reason the GOP is the majority party on the national level, and the conservative agenda has a lot to do with it. Therefore, President Bush’s message to Democrats should be “Here’s how we’re going to do business the next four years, and I would love to have as many of you on board as are willing.”

If anything became evident during Bush’s first term, it’s that capitulation still won’t score any points with Democrats. His first year in office, President Bush more or less allowed Ted Kennedy to author the legislation that created “No Child Left Behind” as part of the “new tone” the President promised to bring to Washington. He also signed onto Campaign Finance Reform and gave seniors a prescription drug benefit. Yet Senator Kennedy and his fellow Democrats are even more contentious now than four years ago.

There is little President Bush can do to relieve the bitterness and hysteria embodied by the Democratic Party and those who support it. Individuals such as Al Sharpton, for example, who have predicted that some of the 1960’s civil rights achievements are now going to be squandered, simply aren’t going to smoke the peace pipe with President Bush. True, there are cool, reasonable heads on the other side who will occasionally stand with the President, but most simply will not be persuaded to do their part to heal the rift that exists between them and the GOP.

Therefore, you can expect President Bush to reach out to those on the Democratic side and accept those who reach back. But it will have to be on the GOP’s terms, and not the minority party’s. There is a reason the Republican majority in Washington, D.C. continues to widen. It’s because the American people have seen that conservatism works, and they want more of it.

The October Surprise, defined here as “a perfectly timed news story designed to cripple the GOP candidate for president right before the election,” has worked for Democrats in the past. The 1992 announcement of an Iran-Contra indictment against Casper Weinberger more or less sealed Bill Clinton’s first election, and George W. Bush’s DWI story in 2000 very nearly tanked his campaign.

On Monday, October 25 — eight days prior to Election Day — the New York Times reported that the Bush Administration allowed 377 tons of high-explosives to fall into the hands of the enemy by failing to secure a weapons depot from looters after the fall of Iraq. The NYT revelation turned out to be nothing more than a re-hashed news item that had first appeared on its pages on February 15, 2003.

The NBC Nightly News helped play spoiler after the Times October Surprise, acknowledging: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing.”

Note the date. April 10, 2003 was more than 18 months ago. In other words, the explosives were already gone by the time U.S. troops arrived. But, as if on cue, John Kerry jumped on the Times story, blaming Bush for failing to secure the weapons cache. (Perhaps if we hadn’t wasted so much time trying to get permission from the French, Germans, and Russians to invade Iraq, we might have secured them.)

Still, it is noteworthy that U.S. forces in Iraq have to date either secured or destroyed some 243,000 tons of Iraqi ordinance — nearly 650 times the amount that is missing. Yet the Times didn’t bother reporting that.

The New York Times congratulated itself the next day by running the headline “Iraq explosives become issue in campaign,” but it isn’t an issue at all. It’s a news story that’s a year-and-a-half old, and merely got recycled in order to create the perception that the Bush Administration had flubbed it again.

The hilarity here is that the NYT’s “October Surprise” has blown up in its face. It’s as though the Times pulled the pin, but forgot to toss the grenade. You see, this is perhaps the first time since the presidential campaign began that the left has conceded that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s. For months, John Kerry and the Democrats told the American people “See, I told you so. There were no WMD’s. Bush took us into Iraq on a lie.” Now, just days before the election, their line has become “See, there were WMD’s, and Bush lost them.”

Oops. Those darn unintended consequences.

Folks, this is nothing more than a naked attempt by the New York Times to sway public opinion in favor of John Kerry at the 11th hour. The NYT — that bastion of journalistic integrity — merely flipped through its archives looking for a story it thought was condemnatory of President Bush, while hoping the American people wouldn’t recognize the news item as old hat. In fact, the Times reported the story as if the weapons had disappeared only the day before.

In the old days when the news media were dominated by a handful of newspapers and the “Big Three” networks, the NYT’s October Surprise would have stood, and Americans would have been none the wiser. But it’s 2004, and we have alternative media as a counterweight. Indeed, the real news came out as Rush Limbaugh opened his program at 11:00 a.m. on October 25 by pointing out the discrepancy, and by the next morning, the alternative media had picked the Times story as clean as if it were a school of piranha.

On Wednesday evening, the Drudge Report, acting on a story broken by the Washington Times, posted the news that “Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation.” Of course, Russia was one of those nations the left said we had to have in our pocket before going into Iraq, but it turns out the Russians were in cahoots with Saddam Hussein.

What the New York Times has shown, perhaps even more vividly than Dan Rather’s use of forged National Guard documents to smear President Bush, is that the mainstream media long ago abandoned any pretense of objectivity, and has become as partisan as the political parties it claims to cover with impartiality. Fortunately, the rise of talk radio and Internet media has enabled those desiring the truth to effectively check-and-balance the mainstream press and expose the traditional media for the partisans they really are.

As a result, the congratulatory cigar the New York Times lit eight days before the election blew up in its face, and the result has become far more condemnatory of the left than President Bush.

Just consider that U.S. District Judge and Clinton-appointee James Carr ruled recently that “Ohio voters who show up at the wrong polling place on Election Day can still cast ballots as long as they are in the county where they are registered.”

Democrats and the NAACP then succeeded in convincing another Clinton-appointed judge to rule that Michigan must count provisional ballots even when cast in the wrong precinct(s), as well. Fortunately, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the Ohio and Michigan rulings, but it illustrates the lengths to which Democrats will go in order to tilt the voting process in their favor.

Meanwhile, an Ohio man was supposedly given crack cocaine to register voters, and has been arrested for false registration. The man, Chad Staton, had been hired by Georgianne Pitts, who admitted to paying Staton crack cocaine for the registrations in lieu of money. Pitts, in turn, says she was recruited by Thaddeus J. Jackson, II, of Cleveland, to obtain voter registrations. Jackson is the Assistant Ohio Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund.

A Denver, Colorado television station has documented 719 cases of forms at five different county election offices that show fraudulent names, addresses, social security numbers, or dates of birth. Some registration drive workers earn $2 per application. One woman admitted to forging three people’s names on about forty applications. She was helping her boyfriend earn more money from an organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a far-left, pro-Democrat organization.

In Berks County, Pennsylvania, Director of Elections V. Kurt Bellman says there have been flagrant attempts at voter registration fraud, noting blatant duplicate voter registrations. Some of the registration drives are being conducted in violation of the law because they are paying incentives to sign up voters. Bellman said his office has had numerous calls from people who were registered through ACORN, complaining that those recording voter information deliberately recorded inaccurate information on the forms.

Hamilton County, Ohio election officials are dealing with a rare case of election fraud there. Board of Elections Director John Williams subpoenaed those named on questionable voter registration cards after similar handwriting and false addresses raised election workers’ suspicions. The cards were turned in by an individual affiliated with ACORN.

In St. Petersburg, Florida, the state attorney’s office is investigating allegations that ACORN fraudulently changed party affiliations on voter-registration applications. ACORN is also under investigation in Miami-Dade County for registering ex-convicts to vote. A former field director for ACORN told investigators that efforts to rig votes for the 2004 election were “routine.”

“There was a lot of fraud committed,” acknowledged Mac Stuart. His allegations include that ACORN “quality control” workers routinely kicked back Republican voter registrations while paying for Democratic ones, using the excuse that “they had enough” new voters for the GOP. Stuart said “boxes” of Republican voter registration cards were tossed while “thousands of invalid voter registration cards” were submitted in their place.

Stuart also admitted that ACORN “eagerly sought” to register convicted felons, even though they’re not allowed to vote under Florida law. He recalled setting up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail.

Back in Ohio, ACORN registered al-Qaida member Nuradin Abdi to vote. Abdi was indicted earlier this year as part of a conspiracy to blow up the Columbus Mall.

ACORN also added Iyman Faris as a new Ohio voter. Faris is serving a 20-year jail sentence for his role in surveying potential al-Qaida targets, including the Brooklyn Bridge. Abdi was registered by ACORN employee Kevin Eugene Dooley, who was indicted earlier this year for false election registration and submitting false election signatures to the Ohio Board of Elections. Only after Abdi’s case was exposed did Ohio officials strike his name from the voting rolls due to his status as an illegal alien.

Allegations of voter fraud are also under investigation in Nashville, Tennessee. About 200 “citizens” who don’t exist registered to vote in Davidson County for the presidential election, and now the TBI is investigating the individual who submitted those forms on behalf of Tennessee Citizen Action (TCA), another liberal group.

There are many more examples of voter fraud that have popped up in the news this election season, nearly all of which have been perpetrated by those friendly to the Democratic Party. Although voter fraud isn’t new to elections in the U.S., it appears that fraudulent efforts are indeed more prevalent this year.

At the same time, Democrats such as Jesse Jackson and John Edwards are falsely scaring minorities into believing that the GOP is plotting to suppress their votes this year, even though evidence points to the contrary. In fact, a 66-page Kerry-DNC manual obtained by the Drudge Report on October 14 instructs operatives that “If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a ‘pre-emptive strike.’”

Desperation has fully set in on the Democratic side, and they are pulling every trick out of their hat — even accusing the GOP of planning what Democrats themselves are already doing. Just as liberals have to rely on activist judges to accomplish what they cannot at the ballot box, so too must they attempt through fraud and manipulation what they cannot achieve in the arena of ideas — namely to convince a majority of the electorate to vote for them.

Indeed, the senator from North Carolina claimed that “We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases…. When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

I know Senator Kerry was campaigning in black churches the day prior to Edwards’ medical revelation, but he must have been working on his Benny Hinn shtick, too. However, you would think John F. Kerry would pursue faith healings, because he has to know that if he goes the medical route, John Edwards will be waiting to sue his pants off.

In truth, this all has to do with embryonic stem-cell research and the Democrat myth that President Bush is standing in the way of a potential cornucopia of landmark medical breakthroughs. It’s all hearsay created by Democrats to frighten people into voting for them. Do right-minded individuals actually believe that electing John F. Kerry to the White House will cause the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk? As usual, John Edwards is relying on the stupidity and blind faith of others to get votes.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is a paraplegic, remarked that “…one of the great mysteries in medicine is why the spinal cord does not regenerate, and no one has any idea of the answers, no one is in any way sure that we’re going to learn the answer from stem-cell research. We might, but I’ve heard a lot of hype over the last 30 years about the keys to the kingdom here in this issue and all of that have proved false. For Edwards to make the claim he did is the worst demagoguery I’ve heard in Washington in a quarter century. To imply that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells is ridiculous and insulting.”

During an August 7 radio address, Senator Kerry three times referred to “the ban” on stem-cell research levied by the Bush Administration. First, there is no ban on either embryonic or adult stem-cell research. In fact there is only one president in U.S. history to allow use of federal money for stem-cell research: George W. Bush. If you recall the President’s speech in August, 2001, he decided to allow federal money be spent on research using existing embryonic stem-cell lines, but not for creating new lines of embryonic stem-cells because these must inevitably involve the destruction of human embryos.

Embryonic stem-cell research is perfectly legal in the United States. Individual states and the private sector are not prevented by the federal government from conducting such research. So anytime you hear a Democrat or an advocate of embryonic stem-cell research refer to President Bush’s “ban,” it’s a lie, and the Democratic Party is relying on your ignorance to maneuver the issue in their favor.

Even more egregious is that a man running for Vice-President of the United States would politicize the death of a fellow human being for his own purposes. Indeed, the notion that Kerry’s election would somehow bring hope to the afflicted is nothing more than a cruel hoax, and demonstrates the depths to which Democrats will slither and the unfortunate people they will use in order to get elected.

This year, Democrats have added a new age group to their repertoire of fear: young adults and their parents. You see, Democrats have been spreading the disturbing rumor that if President Bush is re-elected, he plans to re-instate the military draft. It’s a lie.

Consider one of those urban legend e-mails that is circulating around the Internet, which warns readers, in part, that “The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide. Though this is an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members of Congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld’s prediction of a ‘long, hard slog’ in Iraq and Afghanistan (and permanent state of war on terrorism) proves accurate, the US may have no choice but to draft.”

Of course, Secretary Rumsfeld remarked during a recent interview on the Sean Hannity Show that he opposes the draft, and that our all-volunteer service is functioning quite well. Should our military face a personnel shortage in the future, Rumsfeld stated that the Department of Defense would simply increase incentives to attract more volunteers.

While poking around for votes in West Palm Beach two weeks ago, John F. Kerry remarked that “If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, it is possible” that he would support a mandatory draft.

Unfortunately, the Democrats’ campaign of misinformation (a diplomatic way of saying “lies”) appears to be working. According to a Newsweek poll released October 3, 38% of respondents believe the draft would be re-instated if President Bush is re-elected, compared to only 18% if John F. Kerry is elected.

Here are facts. Legislation has indeed been proposed to the U.S. Congress that would reinstate the draft. Bills HR 163 and S. 89 were both introduced on January 7, 2003. The irony is that its sponsors, Representative Charles Rangel and Senator Earnest Hollings, are both Democrats! In addition, the House version of the bill has 14 co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats. (The Senate version has no co-sponsors.)

On October 5, the House of Representatives effectively killed Rangel’s draft bill 402-2, which would have mandated two years of service from U.S. citizens and resident between the ages of 18 and 26, both male and female.

Over in the Senate, Bill Frist stated that he had no intention of even bringing the draft bill to the floor. In addition, the White House has indicated that even if the measure did pass Congress, President Bush would veto it.

Democrats continue to illustrate they cannot win elections on the issues alone. Not only do they resort to scaring senior citizens in order to get the elderly vote, they are now targeting young adults and their parents to steer votes away from George W. Bush.

The greatest irony, of course, is that they are scoring political points by accusing the President of wanting to do what they themselves have actually proposed. Democrats must rely on the blind faith of an unsuspecting public to advance their cause, because they simply cannot tell the truth about themselves. To do so would cripple them politically.

Democrats know the idea of a military draft is very unpopular with the American people, although it hasn’t deterred them from sponsoring legislation to bring it back. Rather than own up to what they’ve done, they instead lead the public to believe that it’s George W. Bush who wants to draft our young men and women. Desperate people do desperate things, and the draft myth is one more example of the desperation in which Democrats are increasingly finding themselves.

Looking at the rock music industry, which cut its teeth during the turbulent 1960’s, it is ironic that current superstars have become partisans, when rockers had heretofore prided themselves on being apolitical. Indeed, rock music developed its original reputation as a rebellion against politics and The Establishment. After all, artists and fans treated LBJ and Richard Nixon with equal contempt over Vietnam. But now that the rock music industry has become part of The Establishment, it has evolved into a partisan megaphone, with performers such as Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Madonna denouncing President Bush while openly supporting John Kerry.

Switching over to Hollywood, not only have movie actors and actresses such as Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Barbara Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg, and Sean Penn become part of the same lineup, but the industry has also begun to use its money and clout to undermine President Bush. Environmentalists quickly piggybacked on the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” to blame the President and his supposedly destructive environmental policies for the film’s fictitious greenhouse-induced catastrophes. And Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11″ was really nothing more than a hack piece on George W. Bush and his handling of terrorism.

The entertainment industry’s sudden interest in partisan politics is not without several ironies, however.

First, the Hollywood elite typically live very public and very decadent lifestyles, complete with illegal drug use, alcohol, multiple marriages, affairs, etc., where men dress like pimps and women wear public attire that could fit inside a thimble. Yet they will lecture the American people on what they perceive as George W. Bush’s immorality.

Entertainers lambaste the President on his handling of the War on Terrorism, particularly his decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate the people of Iraq. Yet I know of not one of these pampered, “enlightened” movie stars who spent a day in the shoes of one who actually lived under the thumb of Hussein’s oppressive dictatorship. After all, it’s far easier to sympathize with a dictator when only individuals you do not know have suffered.

Also, entertainers have ridiculed the President’s “tax cuts for the rich,” when they themselves are famously wealthy, and to whom the tax savings amounts to pocket change. For those of us who live modest lifestyles confined within family budgets, those tax savings — especially the increase in the child tax credit and the creation of a 10% income tax bracket — have brought some welcome financial breathing room.

Of course, the Hollywood liberals have beaten the environmental drum quite resoundingly, too, and seem quite gleeful to help parade the global warming banner. Yet the same individuals who tout emissions reductions and the Kyoto Treaty don’t seem to want to part with their large, expensive vehicles, or their chauffeured, gas-guzzling limousines, either.

For some reason, titans of the entertainment industry are given a great deal of credibility by sole virtue of their celebrity status. And rock artists whose expertise is writing songs about how bad the world is are perceived as artistic geniuses and are eagerly praised by critics and fans as being “in touch.” The same entertainers and those who fawn over them will castigate Republicans for being perversely ignorant of plight of the “common man,” when, in actuality, it is the entertainers themselves who live in cloistered, Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” alter-worlds.

You might think I’m antagonistic toward the Hollywood left, but there’s a great source of optimism here for conservatives. First, as a consumer, I can stiff these guys whenever I want by refusing to see their films or buy their CD’s. But most important, it seems fitting that Hollywood tabloid fodder has loudly (and sometimes profanely) proclaimed its allegiance to John F. Kerry and the Democratic Party.

I’ve always thought the most interesting debate might be one which doesn’t even involve the President, but one in which John Kerry debates John Kerry. You see, John Kerry has taken many positions, particularly with respect to the War on Terrorism. To say that he is two-faced is even inaccurate, because he has taken more positions than that.

I have catalogued a few of John Kerry’s self-contradictions to illustrate why it is so difficult to pin the senator down on his true beliefs, if indeed he has any. (The Internet address from which I gathered the following quotes, unless otherwise noted, is http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/20/153604.shtml, lest you think I pulled a CBS News and fabricated them.)

First, Kerry, by his own admission, no longer has the judgement or credibility to be president. That’s not mere spin, either. Consider that in December, 2003, John Kerry stated that “Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.”

Unfortunately for John Kerry, this doesn’t square with what he said on September 20, 2004, when he rolled out his latest position on Iraq, pontificating that “Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell, but that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war.” (Source: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040920/D857LANG1.html)

Oops.

But this, in turn, doesn’t line up with what he said during a speech on July 29, 2002: “I agree completely with this administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq — Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on the tough conditions of his surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991.”

Of course, John Kerry now claims the former Iraqi dictator’s “capability to acquire weapons” was not reason enough to go to war.

But this, too, contradicts the Congressional Record, which shows that on October 9, 2002, John Kerry called those who would leave Saddam Hussein alone are “naive to the point of grave danger.”

Yet John Kerry now says Saddam Hussein was not a “threat to our security.”

But in January, 2003, Senator Kerry stated “If you don’t believe…Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me.”

Today, though, John Kerry says Iraq was a “diversion from” the War on Terrorism.

But on December 15, 2003, Kerry remarked that “Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror.”

Just three months later, however, Kerry noted “The final victory in the war on terror depends on a victory in the war of ideas, much more than the war on the battlefield. And the war — not the war, I don’t want to use that terminology….”

Well, now that the presidential election is closing in, and voters have national security squarely in mind, Kerry has reversed himself yet again, and now claims the “most important task” is to win the “war on terrorism.”

Folks, this is all from the man who wants to be our president and our commander-in-chief. I would feel much better about Senator Kerry and have one modicum of respect for him if he would take one position and stick with it, even if he settled into an anti-war point-of-view. I wouldn’t vote for him, but at least we’d all know what we’d be getting with John Kerry.

John Kerry might continue the War on Terrorism, or he might not. He might continue to take the war to the terrorists and act preemptively, or he might pull our troops home and wait for the terrorists to strike the U.S. again. He might coordinate with the United Nations, or he might go at it with the allies we already have in place. For these reasons, it is impossible for voters to know even vaguely where John Kerry stands.

It turns out those documents, considered suspect in the beginning by well-reasoned skeptics, didn’t exactly come packaged with a certificate of authenticity. And CBS got caught with its pants down in what can only be described as a shameful example of journalism.

It would take more than one column to run through the full evolution of this story, but CBS has ultimately found someone willing to fall on the sword in place of Dan Rather: former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett. According to a statement disseminated by CBS News, Burkett “has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents” and “admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins….”

The documents were held to be forgeries by typography experts since CBS aired its story on September 8. It seems there wasn’t a typewriter around in the early 1970’s that could have produced the type of font that appears on the documents. Yet CBS News pressed onward, and is now paying a heavy price for having aired its unsubstantiated hatchet job on the President.

Even after the CBS documents were exposed as fraudulent, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe insisted on the authenticity of their contents. On September 20, after CBS ran its retraction, he asserted “Today we learned that George Bush did not earn enough points to qualify for an honorable discharge…,” that “…Bush didn’t fulfill his duty to his country…,” and that he “…has continued to lie to the American people about it.”

By the way, why is it that Vietnam-era military service is now important to Democrats, when twelve years ago it was considered irrelevant?

Here’s the truth about President Bush’s National Guard service. According to Byron York, White House correspondent for National Review, Bush never once failed to meet his yearly obligation. At that time, guardsmen needed 50 points per year to satisfy their requirement. Records released earlier this year show that George W. Bush joined the Guard in May, 1968, and earned 253 points his first year of service, 340 points in 1969-1970, 137 points the following year, and 112 the next.

In May, 1972 — the time that has been the focus of so much attention — the future president requested and was granted permission to go to Alabama to work on a Senate campaign. According to retired Colonel William Campenni, such requests weren’t unusual.

In fact, Campenni states, “In 1972, there was an enormous glut of pilots. The Vietnam War was winding down, and the Air Force was putting pilots in desk jobs. In ‘72 or ‘73, if you were a pilot, active or Guard, and you had an obligation and wanted to get out, no problem. In fact, you were helping them solve their problem.”

Still, from May, 1972 to May, 1973, George W. Bush earned 56 points — enough to satisfy his requirement. In 1973, as Bush made plans to transition from the Guard to Harvard Business School, he accumulated another 56 points during June and July — exceeding the minimum requirement for the entire year.

At Bush’s request, he was given permission to go. Bush received an honorable discharge after serving five years, four months, and five days of his original six-year commitment. By that time, he had accumulated enough points in each year to cover six years of service.

Yet Democrats continue to perpetuate the stories contained in fake documents that even CBS is now disavowing — that George W. Bush went AWOL by missing months of service. It’s simply not true, and the DNC doesn’t have the evidence to support those claims — not that it’s ever stopped the Democratic Party before.

In the end, this debacle is nothing more than a reflection of the panic in which the Democratic Party and its media accomplices find themselves in trying to take down President Bush. Like the football analogy, they’ve just heaved a desperation pass than got intercepted, and are now scrambling to control the damage.

George W. Bush has taken it upon himself as commander-in-chief to make protecting America his paramount objective. The top question voters are going to ask themselves is “Who is best going to ensure our security?” The answer is George W. Bush, and most Americans are smart enough to cut through the spin — and neither side is without spin — and conclude the same. On September 11, 2001, the world changed. President Bush shifted gears accordingly. The Democratic Party still carries on as it did on September 10.

John F. Kerry has promised the American people that another attack will provoke a swift response. In other words, Senator Kerry is prepared to accept another 9/11, and then act. President Bush, like the rest of us, isn’t willing to accept another attack on our turf, and has taken the War on Terrorism to the terrorists, rather than face them here.

The economy is chugging along, and continues to exhibit growth and rising employment. President Bush inherited a recession, then 9/11, and did what government should do in the face of a receding economy: he cut taxes and got out of the way of the private sector. The result is an American economy that is hitting on all cylinders. Democrats continue to portray the economy much differently than what it is, like a meteorologist standing outside on a warm, sunny day and lamenting how terrible the weather is. In addition, Senator Kerry has promised to roll back most of the Bush tax cuts. President Bush seeks to make them permanent. And voters tend to vote their pocketbooks.

President Bush exudes hope and confidence. Senator Kerry exudes pessimism and insecurity. President Bush looks toward the next day knowing that it is going to be better than today. He believes in the American people, because he understands the resilience of the American spirit. Senator Kerry sees America as one morass of problems that only government can fix. We’ve all got problems. It’s called life, and life is filled with challenges and obstacles, successes and failures. Government can never get rid of them. Senator Kerry promises an unattainable utopia. President Bush promises nothing more than reality, earnestly believes that our best days have yet to be lived, and wants the American people — not the government — to pursue their own happiness.

Everyone loves a hero, but few love a boastful hero, and John F. Kerry is a boastful hero. I appreciate his wartime service, but since he chooses to brag about and distort his service, to me it’s all for naught. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth served with Kerry in Vietnam and recall a much different reality than the one Kerry has given us. The result has been a decline in the polls for Kerry. None of this would have happened had Kerry kept his mouth shut about Vietnam.

Meanwhile, President Bush sees the average American as a hero, the firemen and police who attended to the victims of 9/11, the rescuers, the soldiers and servicemen, and the families who sacrifice in various ways in order to protect the rest of us at home. The same people, in return, see President Bush as a hero. Unlike Senator Kerry, President Bush is a humble and unassuming hero, which is why the label sticks.

President Bush knows who he is and what he believes, and is quick to share his beliefs, even with those who disagree. Senator Kerry is a liberal who wants to be many people, and tailors his point-of-view to whomever he is addressing. He supported the war, then opposed it. He voted for the $87 billion to fund our troops, then voted against it. He believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, but voted against the Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Clinton. He believes life begins at conception, but supports unrestricted abortion up to the moment of birth. He has criticized President Bush for taking preemptive action in Iraq, and for not taking preemptive action prior to 9/11.

President Bush’s voter base is energized and ready to vote for him. Senator Kerry’s voter base is lukewarm, and is only energized in voting against Bush. Democrats cannot possibly be happy with John Kerry as their candidate, and if you ask a Kerry supporter why he is voting for Kerry, he will give you reasons why he is voting against Bush. If you ask a Bush supporter why he is voting for Bush, he will tell you why he supports the President.

This is an historic time and an historic election. Fortunately, taken in the context of American history and our resilient spirit, President Bush is on the right side of this historic period, and it will be reflected once the polls close on Election Day.