The bill would have subjected donors of grassroots organizations to public scrutiny and regulatory harassment whether their contribution was used for the broadcast of an ad advocating the election or defeat of a candidate or not. So, for example, if someone wrote a large contribution to an organization opposing higher taxes, even if other funds were used to broadcast an express advocacy communication, the donor would be reported to the Federal Election Commission. It is an attempt by the Democrats in the Senate to regulate and restrict speech, silence critics of their extremist policies, and intimidate opponents of the administration and the Democratic majority.

It tramples on the First Amendment and the freedom of association. Unless, that is, you are a labor union—groups funded with membership dues are largely exempt. What a surprise! As is the Sierra Club. And the National Rifle Association, which vowed to score a vote for the DISCLOSE Act as a vote against gun rights. Democrats knew that would defeat the bill so they carved out a safe harbor for the NRA. This is not equal protection under the law; it is Chicago-style thuggery.

A broad, bipartisan coalition opposes the DISCLOSE Act. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the bill because it violates the First Amendment. So does just about every conservative organization in the country. The Faith and Freedom Coalition joined a coalition letter sent to every member of the U.S. Senate opposing the bill. We will also score the vote on millions of Congressional Scorecards being distributed after Congress recesses so citizens know how their member of Congress voted, who voted to gut the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and who stood up for freedom of speech.

This bill is a dagger aimed at the heart of our most basic and cherished rights as Americans. In some ways it is a more important issue than any single legislative vote, because if grassroots organizations fighting for faith and freedom can be silenced, our freedoms are not secure. If you think this is hyperbole, I recommend you go back and read the oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, which sparked this battle in the first place. In those oral arguments, the Solicitor General’s office (headed by Elena Kagan) argued that the federal government could outlaw books published in proximity to an election if they appeared to favor a candidate and were paid for with corporate funds.

This attempted power grab speaks to a broader culture of corruption. Yes, the Republicans lost their way in the latter years of their majority, but the Democrats have one-upped them. The DISCLOSE Act was an attempt to rig an election to favor one party over the other, silencing some philosophical advocacy organizations while exempting others. Harry Reid hijacked the bill, bypassed the committee process, drafted the Senate bill in a smoke-filled room, and held no hearings. This is a corruption of the legislative process. The fact that the leading sponsors were the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Chuck Schumer (until recently chair of the Democratic Senate campaign committee) tells one all that is needed about the motives behind the legislation. This is not campaign finance reform. It is the subversion of government to advance political or personal gain. It has been a pattern. This is the same gang that gave us Charlie Rangel, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase and the White House’s attempt to bribe candidates out of primaries with the offer of government jobs.

Fortunately, America is not Venezuela. As a result of yesterday’s vote, our rights to speak, organize and inform voters how members of Congress have voted and where they stand on the issues are safe…but only for now. However, the bill is not dead. Senator Joe Lieberman was not present, and he supports the bill. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer have vowed to bring it back again and again until they pass it. We must remain vigilant and defeat it.

When Ben Franklin was asked after the Constitutional convention what kind of government the framers had designed for the American people, he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Let’s keep it, and not let this Congress and Barack Obama take it away.

Today, by only a one vote margin, the liberals in the U.S. Senate failed to invoke cloture and end debate on the so-called “DISCLOSE” Act. If passed, the cynical DISCLOSE Act championed by liberals Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer would have suppressed the First Amendment free speech rights of conservative organizations while creating carve-outs for liberal organizations of which Schumer and Reid approve.

Faith & Freedom joined with dozens of other major conservative organizations in signing a coalition letter to every member of the U.S. Senate calling on them to vote “NO” on cloture and final passage. Additionally, FFC contacted our 400,000 members and activists and asked them to contact their U.S. Senator and urge them to oppose the bill.

The DISCLOSE Act supported by Congressional Democrats was one of the most egregious and transparent power grabs in the history of modern politics. It made public disclosure of donors to grassroots conservative organizations, whether they funded a political communication or not, subjecting contributors to potential regulatory and public harassment in a clear attempt to intimidate private citizens or corporations from supporting grassroots groups such as FFC. In a partisan power grab, it exempted labor unions, the Sierra Club, and other liberal advocacy groups. It also exempted the National Rifle Association, primarily because Harry Reid and Democrats knew if the NRA was included in the bill, it would go down to defeat.

“Faith & Freedom Coalition is proud to have joined dozens of major conservative organizations in ensuring liberal Democrats in the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the DISCLOSE Act today,” said Faith & Freedom Coalition Executive Director Gregg Keller. “We communicated with every member of the U.S. Senate prior to this vote, asking for their opposition to this cynical piece of liberal legislation. We asked our grassroots army of more than 400,000 members across the country to make their voices heard on this issue and we were glad to help make sure that their words were heeded.”

You can read more about the defeat of the DISCLOSE Act here.

The idea that Mel Gibson’s misconduct somehow signals the downfall of religious conservatism is nonsense. A movement for time-honored values built over three decades and enjoying the support of one out of every four voters does not slide into the abyss because of the behavior of a Hollywood actor. Recall that when the televangelism scandals erupted in the 1980’s and the Moral Majority closed its doors, many rushed to proclaim the movement’s death-knell. Within a few years the Christian Coalition had enrolled two million members and activists and a Republican Congress reformed welfare, cut taxes, balanced the budget, and passed a ban on partial-birth abortion. Whoops.

Faith-based conservatism is actually enjoying a quiet resurgence. Consider the election of Bob McDonnell as governor of Virginia in 2009. After weathering withering attacks for a Regent University master’s thesis advocating pro-family public policy, McDonnnell won by a landslide. Self-identified evangelical voters were 34% of the electorate, the largest on record, and they voted 91% for McDonnell. Or the election of Chris Christie, the first pro-life governor in New Jersey. Previous victorious GOP nominees for governor like Tom Kean and Christie Todd Whitman ran as pro-choice candidates. But Christie’s candidacy energized Catholic and pro-life voters, and the results showed at the ballot box, where he carried self-identified “values voters.” One of his first appointments was Bret Schundler, a conservative champion, as commissioner of education.

For further evidence of the continued vibrancy of the pro-family constituency, look no further than Sarah Palin’s endorsements, which have propelled conservative women like Sharron Angle and Nikki Haley to victory. These “mama grizzlies” are rightly identified with the Tea Party movement, but they are also women of deep faith who strongly support marriage, life, and family. If they were not, they would not have won. Many were aided by the Susan B. Anthony List, the pro-life women’s group that is giving feminism a conservative twist.

(Incidentally, Haley’s victory shows the short-sightedness of proclaiming the movement’s demise because of the personal failings of some. The media trumpeted Mark Sanford’s extramarital affair and subsequent divorce. But none of that mattered at the ballot box. Haley, one of Sanford’s strongest allies in the legislature, won going away.)

The health care debate also showed the potency of values. Obamacare would not have passed in the House without a carve-out for pro-life Democrats, who then found themselves subsequently betrayed by the Senate and the White House. So strong was the backlash when they caved that Bart Stupak of Michigan retired from Congress rather than face defeat. There is no telling how many Blue Dog Democrats will lose their seats this fall because they voted against the pro-life convictions of their districts, but the number could be large.

When those we admire (or those we do not) stumble, we should hate the sin but love the sinner. When Jesus approached the adulteress, he did not condemn her, but rather rebuked those who wanted to stone her and commanded her to sin no more. We should do the same.

Rich’s timing seems odd, given the bleak prospects for Democrats in November. Something tells me when the votes are counted in 2010, pro-family conservatives will be able to say, in the words of Mark Twain, that the premature reports of their death are greatly exaggerated.

Elena Kagan

The National Rifle Association entered the fray against liberal Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court today with an ad saying she can’t be trusted to safeguard our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Kagan is Barack Obama’s liberal extremist nominee for the Supreme Court who famously banned military recruiters from Harvard College and who believes the Constitution is a “living document”, subject to revision. See the NRA’s ad here.

(Henderson, Nevada) – Faith & Freedom Coalition Founder and Chairman Ralph Reed was invited by the Nevada Republican Party to headline Saturday’s lunch at the Party’s 2010 Convention. Ralph also met with U.S. Senate candidate and political phenomena Sharron Angle, who has the honor of taking on Harry Reid in November. Joining Ralph for the visit was our Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition Board of Directors, including our Nevada Chair, Monterey Brookman.

Ralph Reed and Sharron Angle

According to event organizers, the luncheon sold out once Ralph was announced as keynote speaker and extra seating had to be set up in an adjoining room to accommodate increased attendance. Ralph addressed more than 400 conservatives.

“Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition is going to turn out hundreds of thousands of conservatives to vote in 2010,” said Reed. “Together with our Nevada members we are going to deal Barack Obama’s socialistic agenda a major setback in November in the Silver State.”

We’re very pleased here at the Faith & Freedom Coalition to announce that Monterey Brookman has been named the Chairman of the Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Monterey Brookman

Nevada hosts some of the country’s most pivotal races this year, including Harry Reid’s reelection campaign to continue to be Barack Obama’s liberal enabler in the U.S. Senate. Reid faces a very tough challenge from Sharron Angle, who leads him in all the current polling and has galvanized support from social conservatives and Tea Party activists.

Monterey is a tremendous fit for our Nevada organization. She was a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention, is on the board of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly (RNHA) and has been active in organizing and raising funds for charitable efforts like the American Red Cross and the American Lung Association. Monterey has also served as Committee Chair with the conservative think tank Nevada Policy Research Institute and as an Area Coordinator for the Prison Fellowship Ministry.

“I can’t think of anyone better to lead our Nevada effort than Monterey Brookman,” said FFC National Executive Director Gregg Keller. “With Monterey’s leadership, Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition is going to lead the way in turning out conservative voters in that state come November.”

We’re thrilled to announce that Sen. Gilbert Baker will lead Arkansas Faith & Freedom Coalition. Sen. Baker will assemble our Arkansas team and ensure that we identify, educate and turn out a record-smashing number of conservative voters in Arkansas in 2010.

Gilbert Baker

Sen. Baker represents Arkansas’ 30th senatorial district; he is third in seniority in the Senate and is Chair of the Budget Committee. A committed evangelical Christian, Gilbert recently ran a strong campaign for U.S. Senate, raising substantial funds for his campaign and crisscrossing the state aggressively.

“I’m very excited to be taking this leadership position with Arkansas Faith & Freedom Coalition,” said Senator Baker. “We have important local and Congressional elections here this year and a critical race for U.S. Senate. Arkansas FFC is going to make sure that conservatives do their part to impact all those races and make their voices heard.”

In just six short months, Faith & Freedom Coalition has state affiliates in more than 20 states and has over 400,000 members in all 50 states. Without the support of our generous supporters, it wouldn’t be possible for us to educate and turnout a record number of conservative voters in 2010. Thanks for all you do!

Elena Kagan’s testimony is now over and we know not much more about her than we did before her appearance. This, of course, is deliberate. Kagan took obfuscation and dissembling to a new low. She declined to answer many questions and said little or nothing when she did. This is ironic coming from someone who once called the confirmation process a “vapid and hollow charade.” In a 1995 University of Chicago Law Review article on Stephen L. Carter’s outstanding book, “The Confirmation Mess,” Kagan posited that judicial nomination hearings lacked both “seriousness and substance,” so that “the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce….” Farce, you say? We couldn’t have called it better ourselves.

Kagan was not forthright about the assistance she provided, as a Clinton White House aide, to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1995 when the group came out against the partial-birth abortion ban. Her defense of her banning military recruiters, as dean of Harvard Law School, was downright embarrassing. She claimed to be attempting to balance her obligation to uphold the law school’s nondiscrimination policy with the legal obligation of the Solomon Amendment, which forbade institutions who receive federal funds from kicking military recruiters off campus. As Senator Jeff Sessions correctly pointed out, she could not do both, and in the end did not. Her testimony was disingenuous at best and misleading at worst. Little wonder that Arlen Specter threatened to vote against her nomination in protest. (Now he decides to do the right thing.)

More is on the line than the fate of the Kagan nomination. As I point out in my forthcoming novel, The Confirmation, which details the brutal confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court nominee, the advise and consent process is irretrievably broken. No nominee since Robert Bork’s inhumane mistreatment in 1987 (and certainly not since Clarence Thomas was similarly subjected to outrageous charges in 1991) has dared to be forthcoming to the Judiciary committee. For conservatives nominees, the confirmation process is a search and destroy mission. For liberals, it’s an exercise in dissembling followed by relatively smooth sailing.

The Wall Street Journal said Kagan’s testimony amounted to “variations on ‘what part of maybe do you not understand?’” The New York Times added: “The frustrating lack of enlightenment [by Kagan] was hardly surprising given how this process has deteriorated since the Robert Bork hearings in 1987. Not only are nominees reduced to platitudes about upholding precedents, but even the platitudes are porous.” That is called consensus.

So what to do? The Senate needs a new dynamic of confirmation in which Senators ask real questions, nominees provide genuine answers, and prospective judges are confirmed unless they lack strong legal qualifications, an even judicial temperament and mainstream jurisprudential views. This is how the confirmation process worked until judicial activism made federal judges legislators-for-life. The radical left corrupted the process with the vow to “bork” nominees who didn’t share their extreme views. Decades of this has resulted in a thoroughly broken and dispiriting confirmation process. It is badly in need of repair, and we need a new President and a new Senate to take up the challenge and reform it.

As Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out yesterday in his outstanding opening statement, Kagan has “less legal experience of any nominee in at least fifty years”.  If confirmed, she would be the first justice in 38 years who had not previously served as a judge at any level.  But her lack of practical legal experience goes beyond that.  She has never practiced law beyond two brief years as an associate in a major law firm, where she argued no cases and never appeared before a jury.  Last year she received the most “no” votes of any nominee for Solicitor General in U.S. history.  Just nine months ago, when she presented her first case as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan argued in the Citizens United case that the federal government should be allowed to ban books, pamphlets, and even hand-held signs if they were published or distributed with corporate funds in proximity to a federal election.  This Orwellian attempt by Kagan’s office to gut the First Amendment rightly stunned the justices and led to the Court overturning the McCain-Feingold prohibition on express advocacy by corporations.  To say that Kagan’s legal record is thin and out of the mainstream is being kind.

I frankly had begun to wonder if Republicans could drive a coherent message against this nomination.  But Sessions (who has an outstanding legal background of his own), Kyl, McConnell, Hatch, et al, are doing a solid job of making Kagan’s extreme political views the focus of the confirmation.  As a Clinton White House aide, Kagan argued partial-birth abortion was a constitutionally protected procedure.  She recommended pushing campaign finance reform which, in her words, would favor Democrats over Republicans.  Her defiance of settled federal law in banning military recruiters from the campus of Harvard Law School during a time of war reveals the temperament of an ideologue and a political partisan, not the temperament of a judge.

In my forthcoming novel The Confirmation, I write about the fact that when it comes to judicial nominations, “advise and consent” has become “search and destroy,” but only for conservative nominees.  Justices nominated by Democratic presidents have generally had easy sledding.  Those days are over.  As we are already seeing, Kagan will be asked very tough questions.  Her nomination will not go unchallenged, and will likely garner a large number of “no” votes.

Given the math in the Senate, it will be difficult to stop Kagan’s nomination.  But Republicans should do their best to make the case against this nomination.  They may even defy conventional wisdom and succeed.  Supreme Court confirmations are funny things and often go in directions the administration did not plan, as Obama can already testify.

Our tireless Chairman and Founder Ralph Reed has been absolutely tearing up the road of late, traveling the country tirelessly. Ralph and our staff will not stop till we have the activists and infrastructure in place to ensure record-breaking conservative turnout in the 2010 elections. Anything less than a full effort will endanger our shared goal of dealing this President and his socialistic policies a stunning rebuke come November.

Marco Rubio, Jo Anne Reed and Ralph Reed

Thanks to the efforts of our supporters, we now have Faith & Freedom state affliates up and running in 20 states after only 6 months of operations! Our membership list exceeds 350,000 committed members in all 50 states and our fundraising is going extremely well.

Ralph’s most recent state visit was to California. There, he met with grassroots leaders, donors and conservative candidates. Ralph met with Marco Rubio, conservative candidate for Senate from Florida. Ralph also met with Don Wagner, who recently won the 3-way Republican primary for California’s 70th Assembly District. FFC was proud to distribute voter guides and newsletters in that important primary race. We helped turn out the conservative vote and we are excited for Don to represent conservative values in Sacramento, where those values desperately need more conservative voices.

All this summer, Faith & Freedom state affiliates from every region of the country will be training grassroots activists to become Faith & Freedom leaders as part of our Local Chair Drive. We’re bringing together Tea Partiers, home schoolers and other conservatives to give them the tools they need to identify, educate and turn out conservative voters in their area.

Colorado Faith & Freedom Coalition (COFFC), under the leadership of Jim Pfaff, is off to a tremendous start. COFFC has held well-attended trainings thus far in Denver, Grand Junction and Littleton and future trainings are scheduled for late June in Longmont and Fort Collins. Already, COFFC has trained more than 200 grassroots activists towards their goal of having 300 Colorado local chairs this election cycle.

“I am amazed by the positive energy at these trainings,” Pfaff said. “It is clear to me that as we continue to build the grassroots network across Colorado that conservatives and Tea Party activists are ready to take our state back from failed policies in Washington and Denver.”

FFC is spending much of this summer and fall training activists in every targeted congressional district in the country. Each of these FFC leaders will have the tools and know-how to turn out the conservative vote in their area and will help us deliver a resounding conservative victory this year.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to follow President Obama’s lead in claiming that God directs her lawmaking, invoking the Bible as her legislative roadmap. If a conservative Republican did this, it would be the top of the news.

Ken Blackwell

Last week, Pelosi made a rambling, redundant, somewhat incoherent monologue in which she claimed that “The Word” directed her. She clarified that meant “The Word Made Flesh”—the incarnate Deity—Jesus Christ. She doesn’t leave us to surmise, elaborating that she makes policy decisions, “in keeping with the values of Jesus.”

However, the only place to learn about “The Word” Jesus is to read “The Word,” the Bible. As two Christians who read the Bible, we’re not sure where in its pages Nancy Pelosi found the inspiration for her top legislative priorities. Since the Bible is the sacred text of the Christian faith, and the exclusive record of the teachings and values of Jesus, where else could she be enlightened to the values of Jesus?

We don’t recall ever reading, “Thou shalt require every person to buy health insurance” or “Thou shalt oppose charter schools and home-schooling” in the Bible. We’d have to rename the Ten Commandments the Twelve Commandments instead. How do those Pelosi priorities embody the “values of Jesus?”

Nor do we remember being taught, “And Peter spoke unto them, saying, ‘The Lord commands that you shall pass a cap-and-trade tax which shall tax all the people, that they may inherit a cooler planet.” (Given that the science doesn’t support man-made global warming, at least this last possibility would explain where Speaker Pelosi gets her evidence for cap-and-trade. She’s claiming divine revelation.)

We can’t imagine what Bible Speaker Pelosi is reading. The Bible does not sanction gay marriage or abortion. It does not command heavy taxes on employers and professionals to pay for government handouts.

Instead, the Bible speaks of God and man, the relationship between the two and how that relationship can be restored. It reveals the moral character of God, the divine plan for the ages, and explains the purpose and duties of man.

From everything we see from her, we are firmly convinced that none of those biblical instructions or admonitions has any impact on Pelosi’s official activities.

This reminds us of the 2008 election season, where then-Senator Barack Obama claimed that Christian Right leaders had “hijacked” Christianity. Hijacked? How dare any politician claim that a group of clergymen upholding the traditional beliefs of the Christian faith is “hijacking.”

Yet after winning the White House, President Obama showed the audacity to claim a biblical mandate for his agenda. On August 19, 2009, the president held a conference call with Christian clergy, urging them to endorse his healthcare legislation as a moral issue, and claiming that their Christian duty to care for their brother obligated them to support him. Now that is what hijacking Christianity looks like.

In the end, perhaps President Obama and Speaker Pelosi read the Bible the same way they read the Constitution. They believe in rights to abortion and government-run healthcare, despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions such rights, but they oppose the idea that the Second Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment make gun bans like the D.C. gun ban or the Chicago gun unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Constitution plainly declares it.

Obama and Pelosi likewise do not take at face value the Bible’s words on countless moral issues or divine truths. They claim biblical imperatives that are not found in the text, and ignore words that are spelled out in black and white.

If a Republican politician did this, there would be an outrage. How dare he! Doesn’t he know the Constitution declares the separation of church and state? (Words, by the way, which never appear in the Constitution.)

But this is the hypocrisy of the modern liberal culture. Countless Christians who go about their 2 Timothy 3:16 duty of regarding the Bible as God-breathed, and useful for teaching and correcting are mocked and ridiculed. These leftist elites recoil in horror if you cite to a specific passage of Scripture as guiding your decisions, while claiming that the Bible endorses a far-left political agenda is not considered worth mentioning on the air.

In our #1-bestselling book, The Blueprint, we explain how this is part of President Obama’s design to fundamentally transform this country. Christians need to rise up and contend for their faith. In the words of Titus 1:9, we must, “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught,” so that we may, “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”

These are challenging times in which we live, but Providence has placed us in a country where we have the right and ability to speak out. We must not stand silently by as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama claim that we have hijacked Christianity, while in fact that is exactly what they are doing right before our eyes.

We must stop President Obama’s blueprint to turn America into a radical secular nation.

Ken Blackwell is Chairman of the Ohio Faith & Freedom Coalition. Ken Klukowski works as special counsel at the Family Research Council. They are the authors of the national bestseller The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.

Yesterday we informed you of Faith & Freedom Coalition’s efforts to identify, educate and turn out conservative voters in New Jersey’s 6th congressional district Republican primary. That primary ended in a close, David-versus-Goliath win for social conservative candidate Anna Little. Today we have more good news for you regarding FFC’s work in the field: a conservative primary win in southern California.

The contested Republican primary for California’s 70th Assembly district featured Don Wagner, the President of the Board of Trustees of the South Orange County Community College District and a committed social and fiscal conservative.

FFC spent weeks blanketing conservative voters in the 70th district with targeted voter guides on issues ranging from balancing the state budget to life and protecting marriage. The outcome was recently decided in another nip-and-tuck race. Don won the race against his less conservative opponents by a mere 860 votes.

Faith & Freedom is proud to have played a role in turning out conservative voters in these critical races. Whether its Congressional races in New Jersey, Assembly races in southern California or a gubernatorial race in Virginia, in a few short months Faith & Freedom has proven to be a hugely effective force at turning out the conservative vote.

But, we’re just getting warmed up. With the help of our more than 300,000 members nationwide, together we’ll help deliver a huge conservative victory in November.

If one wants to know what is going to happen in November, the surest sign of which way the winds are blowing is primaries in the spring and summer. Obama’s startling defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary in 2008, overcoming her money and endorsements and seeming inevitability, presaged the Democratic landslide in November. In 1994, it was the victories of Senate candidates like Oliver North in Virginia, pro-life Mike DeWine in Ohio and Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania in GOP contests that foreshadowed a conservative wave at the polls, leading to the first Republican House majority in 40 years and only the second GOP majority in the Senate since Dwight Eisenhower.

Ralph Reed

The same phenomenon is unfolding now. What began as a Tea Party surge now has an interesting wrinkle: 2010 just might be the year of the conservative woman. Nikki Haley won nearly 50 percent of the vote in a crowded field in South Carolina in spite of an eleventh-hour flurry of personal attacks. She had been endorsed by Jenny Sanford and Sarah Palin, among others. While that race may go to a run-off, Haley is the likely GOP nominee and the next Governor of the Palmetto State. Ditto for Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada. The lamestream media parrots the Democratic spin that these results bode well for Harry Reid. Don’t believe it. Reid’s re-elect is in the low 40’s and polling has shown him losing to Angle. And how pathetic is it that the Senate Majority Leader has to pray for an allegedly weak GOP nominee, hoping to “win dirty” in his own home state?! It speaks to how truly weak and desperate the Democrats are heading into the fall.

Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman’s victories in California also show the appeal of a conservative woman at the polls. Though Whitman is far more socially liberal than Fiorina, she won on the conservative themes of reining in government spending and creating jobs by lowering taxes. Fiorina waxed liberal former Congressman Tom Campbell, whose only message at the end could be summed up, “I can win.” He didn’t. Fiorina also had the support of Sarah Palin and the Susan B. Anthony List and won going away.

Nor are these high profile victories the only signs of a conservative woman’s moment. Earlier, Susanna Martinez overcame a spending disadvantage to win the Republican nomination for Governor in New Mexico. If victorious in November she will join Marco Rubio as a rising Hispanic star on the national stage. Anna Little, mayor of Highlands in Monmouth county, leads for the GOP nomination in New Jersey’s Sixth Congressional district. Little had the backing of Tea Party activists, Faith and Freedom Coalition (which I founded last year), and Building a New Majority, a New Jersey group focused on ground game and turnout. Little’s margin stands at only 65 votes, so there may be a recount. Assuming she holds on, she will face Frank Pallone, Jr., one of the most liberal members of Congress, in the fall.

There are many women candidates in later primaries that will join these victors on the general election ballot. But women were not the only winners. Tea Party-endorsed Tom Graves won a hotly contested special election in the strongly Republican Ninth District of Georgia to replace former Congressman Nathan Deal in a race that pitted many party establishment figures against grassroots activists. Scott Rigell, a Regent University alumnus and successful businessman, won in Virginia’s Second congressional district, backed by Pat Robertson and Governor Bob McDonnell, among others. He faces Glenn Nye in one of the most high profile House races in the nation, a must win if the Republicans hope to win control of the House.

One of the clear winners yesterday was Sarah Palin. The liberal media wrote her obituary after the 2008 elections, but she has emerged as one of the most influential political figures in the country. Not every candidate she has endorsed this year has won, but her support played a critical role in validating the candidacies of Nikki Haley and Carly Fiorina.

Politics is a little like physics. Every action causes a reaction. The election of a multi-ethnic, liberal president in 2008 has now sparked a conservative, limited government, pro-family counter-reaction, clad in lipstick and pumps.

Ken Blackwell

World famous tenor Plácido Domingo has undergone surgery for the removal of a cancerous polyp. The surgery took place at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital’s spokeswoman announced that the cancerous growth was small and the opera star is expected to make a full recovery.

Let us all hope so. Plácido Domingo has enriched the world with his gifts. In addition to singing the lead role in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at Milan’s La Scala opera house on April 16th, Domingo is expected to return to London’s Royal Opera House in June for the title role in the 1881 version of the opera.

Plácido’s peripatetic lifestyle includes his roles as stage performer, general director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Washington National Opera. In addition, he encourages young opera talent.

His website lists his participation as judge in competitions for aspiring performers.

We’re not talking American Idol, here. Plácido’s judging has taken him to Paris (three times), Mexico City, Madrid (twice), Bordeaux, Tokyo, Hamburg, Puerto Rico, Los Angeles (twice), Washington, Valencia and a combination of Switzerland (St. Gallen), Austria (Bregenz), and Germany (Friedrichshafen, Isle of Mainau).

It’s a wearing schedule for anyone. It’s anything but placid. For a 69-year old world-renowned performer, it simply goes with the territory. When he was diagnosed with cancer, where did he go?

To New York, of course. To the United States of America. We should be justly proud that this citizen of the world came to us. He could have gone anywhere for surgery. He would be a VIP in any medical facility on the planet. He came here.

When we hear that the American medical system is “broken,” and hear that doctors here will cut off your foot or cut out your child’s tonsils unnecessarily, just for the fees — as President Obama has charged — we should all protest.

The only doctors in the world whom Mr. Obama has commended are the Cuban doctors.

Those Cuban medics are good — at routine, elementary-level health care. They are sent around the Caribbean and the world by the Communist government of Fidel Castro. They are sent there for Havana’s propaganda purposes. Doubtless they do some real good. In many terribly poor countries, basic health care — sanitation, inoculation, health education — can bring measurable improvement to people’s lives.

When Fidel Castro himself became critically ill, however, he didn’t call for a Cuban doctor. He summoned specialists to Havana — from Spain. He seems to have made an astonishing recovery.

Plácido Domingo could have gone to those Spanish specialists, too. After all, Plácido is Spanish. But he had access to America. So he flew to New York as fast as he could. He wanted to see the Lady in the Harbor lift her lamp beside the Golden Door. God bless him. Get well soon, Maestro. And may we all recover soon from ObamaCare!

Ken Blackwell is the Chairman of the Ohio Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Mr. Liu’s nomination is in trouble today because he has hidden key information from the Senate regarding his judicial philosophy and past writings. His obfuscation forced him to issue a public apology and all seven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are standing firm against his nomination.

Mr. Liu is not fit to sit on the federal bench and you can do something to stop his appointment today. Call the members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee and tell them to put a stop to Mr. Liu’s appointment. You can access their contact information here: http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm

Mr. Liu is viewed by many as exactly the type of nominee Barack Obama intends to name to the Supreme Court: very liberal and highly ideological. The Faith and Freedom Coalition will oppose Obama’s plan to stock the Court with radical leftists but we will need your help in the coming days to be successful in winning. Please make a donation to day to FFC so we can keep our Courts safe from radicals.

Sincerely,

- Ralph Reed

The problem with this media-driven narrative (like the erroneous claims of threats of violence by Tea Partiers) is that it is not backed up by the facts. A CNN poll taken over three days, including the day Obamacare passed the House, found that 59 percent oppose the bill and only 39% favor it. A CBS survey found that more people believe it will hurt health care in America than help. The same CNN survey finds that 54% of the American people believe Obama will be defeated in 2012 while only 44% believe he will be re-elected. This question used by pollsters is one of the most reliable predictors of the electorate’s view of an incumbent president.

Similarly, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released over the weekend and conducted after Congressional passage found that 50 percent of the American people oppose the new health care law, while only 46 percent support it. According to the Post, “That is virtually identical to the pre-vote split on the proposals and similar to the divide that has existed since last summer, when the country became sharply polarized over the president’s most ambitious domestic initiative.” (The WaPo-ABC poll is of all adults, not likely voters, so it vastly understates the intensity of the opposition to Obamacare among those most likely to go to the polls in November.

Scott Rasmussen similarly finds in polls taken after the bill passed that opposition to Obamacare now stands at 54 percent—-the highest on record.

The same pattern prevails in 2010 battleground states. A Mason-Dixon poll in Florida found that only 34 percent of voters in the Sunshine State support Obamacare, while 54 percent are opposed. Among seniors the disapproval is a staggering 65-25 percent, and among independents it is 62-34 percent opposed. The same poll finds Obama’s approval number more negative by 15 points.

If Obamacare is this unpopular in the afterglow of Obama’s East Room signing ceremony (where Joe Biden proved he is the gift that keeps on giving when he dropped the f-bomb) and the media’s cheerleading, how unpopular might it be when the American people vote in seven months? There are no benefits for the vast majority of the population until 2014 or later, while the bureaucracy, taxes, and regulations begin now. Obama got it exactly backwards: he led with the pain, and saved the sweet stuff for later. There will be no class of federal beneficiaries voting to protect their benefits in November, only millions of seniors mad about Medicare cuts and small businessmen and women livid about their tax increases.

The process by which this legislation was enacted was cynical and corrupt. Democrats breezily insist the American people don’t care about “process.” They claim no one cares about the bribes, the bullying, the backroom deals. That is insulting and suggests voters don’t care about the integrity of their leaders. The Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, gimmicky accounting, eleventh hour executive order to pacify pro-life Democrats, hundreds of millions in Medicare and Medicaid hand-outs to the last few wavering voters, all made a mockery of Nancy Pelosi’s vow to run the most ethical House in history. Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal has catalogued the sad tale of corruption HERE.

When politicians insist that how a bill becomes a law is “inside baseball,” brace for a voter backlash. I was Georgia Republican party chairman when the Democrats in my state passed the most brazenly gerrymandered redistricting plan in modern times, carving up towns, counties, and communities for partisan advantage. After Governor Roy Barnes rammed the reapportionment plan through the legislature, I was on a panel with a lot of smart, erudite pundits at the Georgia Municipal Association who assured the audience that voters would not care because reapportionment was complicated and process-oriented. I thought they were wrong and that voters would resent the manner in which their representation in Washington and Atlanta had been distorted for raw political power. But I was clearly alone in that view. A few months later I bumped into then-Senator Zell Miller at an event at the World Congress Center. “I followed what you’ve been saying about redistricting,” he said. “When the voters go to the polls, they’re going to ask themselves one question: Who did this to me?” Zell cocked his head and tapped my chest with his index finger for emphasis. “You just watch,” he said. That November Republicans elected the first GOP governor since Reconstruction and gained control of the state Senate after winning an unprecedented number of seats and then having four Democrat state Senators switch parties. (Governor-elect Sonny Perdue was on the phone until the wee hours with his former Democrat colleagues persuading them to cross the aisle and Republicans promptly redrew the Congressional and state legislative districts to preserve towns, counties, and communities.) The pundits were wrong. Voters care about process, especially when they know they’ve been played for fools.

Obamacare is a disastrous law by any measure. Substantively, politically, and from as a legislative process it is an affront to the American people and an assault on our individual freedom and proper representative government.

In truth, the summit is a sideshow. As the Democrats have already made it abundantly clear, this is a head fake. Their real plan is to have the House pass the Senate bill without changes, then do a “tweak” with a second bill using the budget reconciliation process in a clear and blatant violation of U.S. Senate rules.

Will it work? Too early to tell. Bart Stupak said yesterday on Fox News that there were up to 15 to 20 Democratic House members who are gravely concerned about the lack of restrictions on the taxpayer funding of abortion in the Senate bill. With the first House bill passing by the razor-thin margin of 220-215, Nancy Pelosi has no margin for error. With several seats vacant due to death or resignation, she needs 217 votes, and Joseph Cao, the Republican elected to the New Orleans House seat formerly held by William Jefferson, has already said he will vote “no” this time. Counting the resignation of Robert Wexler of Florida and the death of Jack Murtha, that brings Pelosi’s total down to 217, assuming she holds everyone else. Given Stupak’s comments, that is highly unlikely. But it may well be that some Blue Dogs will feel more comfortable voting for a bill without the public option, in spite of the weaker abortion language. Bottom line: the battle is joined, and it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.

Obamacare is supported by only about 41% of the American people and opposed by an average of about 56% according to the most recent published polls. But the Democrats are in the barrel and are bound and determined to go over the fall. They will pass this bill or die trying. Those of us opposed to government-run health care better strap on our helmets and oppose this massive, socialistic health care scheme with everything we have. Otherwise, we may spend the next decade paying for it and working to repeal it. Better to defeat it now…for good.

Bayh’s announcement was a punch in the gut to his party and his president. He rejected last-minute entreaties from President Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to stay. It was a bitter pill to swallow and it didn’t take long for the off-the-record Democrat sniping at Bayh to begin. “’He’s finished,” one Democratic political consultant told Politico “’His party needed him to stay and fight, and he ran away. People won’t forget.”

Bayh and MSM commentators bemoaned the “dysfunction” of the Senate as an institution and Washington, DC (“this town,” as the DC crowd calls it). This almost requires the dubbing in of a laugh track. Where was the hand-wringing when Democrats were filibustering George W. Bush’s appellate court nominees? Or when they did everything in their power to prematurely end U.S. involvement in Iraq with statements like “the war is lost”? Or when there was discussion of impeaching Bush or trying Cheney for war crimes? Or when Democrats called for an independent counsel to investigate the Valerie Plame leak, leading to the conviction of Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the harassment of other Bush aides when Patrick Fitzgerald knew from the outset that the source for the leak was Richard Armitage? The selective bemoaning of Washington’s “dysfunction” and “partisanship” by liberals who over-reached in pursuing an extremist agenda and have run into the opposition of the American people is quite amusing.

More seriously, Bayh’s retirement is the latest loss of an endangered species of centrist Democrats. There used to be powerful and influential centrist Democrats in the Senate like Sam Nunn (and later Zell Miller) of Georgia, David Boren of Oklahoma, and Russell Long of Louisiana. They voted for the Reagan or Bush tax cuts and supported a strong defense. But they are a dying breed. In this sense, Bayh is the last of the Mohicans. It says a lot about the current state of the Democratic party; even as they celebrated their largest majorities in Congress in decades, the center was imploding. The hijacking of the party of Jackson and Jefferson by the far left since the 2004 elections is now coming back to haunt Democrats. As Democratic pollster and former Bill Clinton advisor Doug Schoen put it: “This [Bayh’s retirement) sends a message that centrists are increasingly rare species in a Democratic Party that has lurched too far to the left.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for “Democrat centrists leave party in droves” stories from the MSM. They only write those stories about Republicans.

My sense is that Palin has not made a decision about running for president, but as she told Chris Wallace on Fox she has not foreclosed that option. In the meantime, she is raising funds for GOP candidates (many of them in primaries), giving speeches, maintaining ongoing exposure as a Fox News contributor, and making contributions through her political action committee. All these activities will redound to the benefit of conservatives in the short term, regardless of her long-term plans.

Palin has sharpened both her message and performance on the stump. Her Tea Party remarks provide a blueprint of sorts for conservative candidates in 2010. First, she led with Obama’s lack of leadership in the war on terrorism, including Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after fifty minutes and treating terrorism as primarily a law enforcement matter. “To win that war we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at a lectern,” she said to a loud ovation. This is reminiscent of Scott Brown’s line during his victory speech after winning the U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts: we want our taxes spent buying weapons to fight terrorists, not paying for lawyers to defend them. Obama claims that he is handling high-value detainees identically as his predecessor. If that is the case, why does he continue to claim that the Bush administration undermined the war on terror by violating our own values? He can’t have it both ways, and this is a huge liability for Obama and the Democrats.

Second, during the Q and A following her speech, when asked what the first things Republicans should do if they regain Congress, Palin emphasized fiscal responsibility and time-honored values. “We’ve got to reign in the spending, obviously, and not raise it [with] extremely high budgets and then say, OK, we are going to freeze a couple of programs,” she said. Then, talking about America’s religious heritage, she said America needs to “go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation” and elect leaders unafraid “to proclaim their reliance on our Creator.”

Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, appearing on MSNBC, denounced all this as essentially hate speech. He attacked Palin for being “a merchant of hate with an oh-gosh smile.” (Translation: it’s working!)

This may be Palin’s unique strength. She understands the fiscal and values agendas of conservatism are reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. A nation that relies on God and family for its strength does not seek to expand the federal government to meet every need. Fiscal responsibility and small government are not merely economic principles, they speak to the moral character of a people that believes government has an important but limited function. In this sense, Palin is a fusionist who weaves the various strands of conservatism into a coherent whole.

This is why Palin can act as a bridge between Tea Party activists and the Republican Party and have credibility with both. For now the media is fascinated with whether she will run in 2012. They hope she does, if only because it will make for the most interesting political story since the Obama-Hillary rumble in the 2008 Democratic primaries. That decision is probably a year away. Meanwhile, the MSM is missing the bigger story, at least in the short-term: Palin, who they tried to drive out of respectable political discourse, is re-energizing the grassroots of a Republican Party that they dismissed as dead. Their attacks against her—and the values she symbolizes—not only backfired, they are now working in her and the GOP’s favor.

What ultimately drives the media crazy is they know instinctively they are co-conspirators in her rise. From the Katie Couric interview to the over-the-top attacks by the likes of Shrum, by overplaying their hand they made Palin a bigger force than they ever intended. Had they simply been fair to Palin when she ran for vice president and treated her with decency, she would not be viewed now by so many grassroots conservatives as a victim of irrational elitist hatred. As much as John McCain in selecting her as his running mate in 2008, the MSM made her a force, and she is proving she can use that platform very effectively indeed.

Massachusetts—in a huge turnout of over 2 million voters in a special election—has sent a clear and undeniable message to Washington: defeat the Obama-backed health care reform bill, stop the spending spree, and put the brakes on the Obama agenda, from terrorism to spending to taxes. The defeat of Martha Coakley and the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate is the canary in the coal mine for Democrats. This is a state that, while it has elected Republicans as governor in recent years (William Weld, Mitt Romney), had not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 37 years. The seat won by Brown had been held by Edward M. Kennedy for 47 years, and is currently occupied by Paul Kirk, a placeholder and longtime Kennedy family retainer. Brown will be the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, representing a state with only 13 percent of the voters registered Republicans.

According to Gallup, Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted faster than any president in modern times. His job approval in a recent CBS News poll stood at an anemic 46 percent, while his rating for health care was a mere 36 percent. (And this from CBS News.) Independents have abandoned the Democrats, breaking for Republican candidates by 2-1 or 3-1, and a resurgent grassroots conservative movement is tapping a deep vein of voter discontent. Then came Massachusetts.

First, Bob McDonnell won the Virginia gubernatorial contest by an 18-point landslide. On the same night, Chris Christie defeated Jon Corzine and became the first non-incumbent Republican governor candidate to win 50 percent of the vote in New Jersey since the 1970’s. Democrat pollster Celinda Lake said it best: “There’s a lot of blame to go around, but the point of the matter is there’s a wave. And that wave: it hit Virginia; it hit New Jersey; it hit Massachusetts.” she said.

Before last night, Democrats were in denial. The Virginia blow-out? The White House threw Creigh Deeds under the bus, saying he was a poor candidate who refused to embrace Obama. New Jersey? Corzine had his own problems. When Obama’s poll numbers began to crater, the White House’s response was to shoot the messenger. They smeared respected independent pollster Scott Rasmussen when he showed Obama’s job approval ratings dropping. Rasmussen is now fully vindicated, accurately documenting the Brown surge in Massachusetts.

The White House also thought Chicago-style machine intimidation would work with the alternative media. When Fox News broadcast commentary critical of Obama, Obama advisor Anita Dunn went into attack mode and claimed it was “not a news organization.” The result? Fox News now has ratings three times those of MSNBC and CNN combined in prime time.

When millions of average Americans poured into the streets to protest Obama’s out-of-control spending at “tea parties” beginning last April, the White House and its liberal allies denounced these protesters as “astroturf,” “tea-baggers,” “evil,” and even compared them to Nazis. House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey organized opposition to Obama’s policies, so White House allies pressured his DC law/lobbying firm to dump him. I saw Dick at a rally opposing Democratic health care reform the weekend it happened, and he joked: “They made a big mistake. Now I can spend all my time fighting them.”

With each defeat and setback, the Obama political team and the Democrats engaged in spin, finger-pointing, leaks to an adoring press corps, all the while ignoring the warning signs. As late as yesterday, while the Democratic establishment hung black crepe and mourned the impending loss of “the Kennedy seat,” a Democratic official was telling Politico with a straight face that Organizing for America—Obama’s campaign political operation now housed at the DNC—“is a winner” in Massachusetts, “that’s clear, win or lose.” Win or lose? Only in the Alice-in-Wonderland universe in which the Obama political team lives is someone who suffers an historic defeat proclaimed a winner. So I suppose Obama should have gotten a gold medal for flying all the way to Copenhagen on bended knee before the IOC, even if Chicago did lose the Olympics.

Is the Obama team still in denial? One wonders. Does Obama have the capacity to listen to the voters, call an audible, and adjust his policies and trim his ambitions? I doubt it. Obama has always struck me as a committed liberal, a true believer, and he will try to salvage health care and get whatever extreme policies he can passed before the 2010 elections. If other Democrats watch their careers go up in smoke and suffer the loss of their offices as a result, so be it. We shall see.

In the book on the 2008 presidential campaign Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann recount that Obama campaign aides referred to him privately as “the black Jesus.”Whenever they were in trouble, Obama’s eloquence and gifts saved the day. But after last night, Obama is not looking like a political savior anymore. In fact, he looks like the kiss of death. Massachusetts was opening volley of the 2010 elections, and Democrats are bracing for more defeats of historic proportions.

Now Obama’s real-life 3 a.m. phone call has come, and he has flunked the test. When a Nigerian national trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen boarded a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day and tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines aircraft carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members, it was one of the most significant attempted terrorist attacks against the homeland since the war on terror began. After first claiming the foiled terrorist plot was the work of an “isolated extremist,” falsely implying that he was not part of al-Qaeda or another terrorist network, it took Obama days (while he played golf in Hawaii) to step before the cameras and acknowledge the obvious: a massive, systemic, and nearly disastrous failure of intelligence.

Obama reticence to lean into this terrorist attack with the full force of his role as commander-in-chief is part of a larger whole. First, his administration banned the use of the phrase “war on terror,” as though pretending it did not exist would make it go away. His secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, bragged to a German publication that the new term was not “terrorist attack,” but “man-made disaster.” (to read the full interview click here) Imagine the possibilities! I suppose that would make an earthquake a “divinely engineered hiccup of the tectonic plates.” People might still die, but the term sounds so less militaristic and…Cheney-esque.

Napolitano actually went on CNN to claim that “the system worked.” To watch the video click here. The statement resembled a self-parody so thoroughly that it could have aired on “Saturday Night Live” unedited with a dubbed laugh track. Obama, in full recovery mode, is now hosting all-hands-on-deck meetings in the Situation Room of the White House, ordered up a full review of what led to the intelligence failure, and is vowing to take corrective action. But in a sense, his attempts at catch-up are insufficient.

As Charles Krauthammer points out, Obama still stands by his administration’s decision to treat Abdulmatallab as a “suspect” rather than an “enemy combatant,” giving him full Miranda rights, and allowing him to lawyer up so we can get no information about his al-Qaeda handlers. Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post: “The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.”

My sense is that American politics will resemble Israeli politics in the future. Which is to say that security will be the paramount political issue, with leaders judged harshly for their ability to defeat the terrorists and protect the homeland. This was certainly the case with the government of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, buffeted by the failures and miscalculations of the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, which led to the defeat of the Kadima party in the next election.

I recall my first visit to Israel in 1994. The Oslo accords had recently been signed, and a strained and uneasy peace with the PLO prevailed. I met with Benjamin Netanyahu, then a back-bencher in the Knesset. I asked him what he thought would happen under the new accords. He replied matter-of-factly, “Someone will perforate the security cordon, innocent civilians will die, and we will discover too late that we were insufficiently diligent in protecting ourselves against a sworn enemy.” That is of course exactly what happened, and it helped to elect Netanyahu prime minister the first time. Now he finds himself back in office, carried along by a wave of popular sentiment that too much negotiation with terrorists by predecessor governments led to less security, not more.

Obama is beginning to suffer a similar judgment by the American people for his failure to understand the nature of the current conflict. His Cairo speech, while eloquent and inspiring, seems strangely incongruous against the backdrop of the suicide bombing killing seven CIA agents in Afghanistan, the Fort Hood shooting, the murder of Americans at a military recruiting station in Little Rock, and the attempted downing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by a terrorist.
Hillary was right: Obama was not ready. We can only hope and pray that he will get ready quickly. Whether he wants to use the term “war on terror” or not, the war is joined, we have implacable enemies who want to destroy us and kill our citizens, and our government must acknowledge the existence of the war and aggressively prosecute it on all fronts.

Senate Democrats were caught flat-footed by Lieberman’s statement. They had assumed that they could count on his support for the latest “compromise” version of the public option: an expanded version of the Federal Employee Health Care Plan that would be open to consumers and subsidized by the government, combined with a “buy in” to Medicare by those aged 55-64. That “compromise,” which in many ways was worse than the original public option because it hastened Medicare’s massive and looming unfunded liabilities and deficit, was rumored to be getting what one Hill source told me was a “very bad number” from the Congressional Budget Office. Now it appears to be dead even before the CBO gives it a number. Which means Reid is back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, support for Obamacare is imploding in the polls, making Democrats even more nervous than they already were about the 2010 elections. Fox News has a new poll out that finds that only 41 percent of the American people want Congress to pass health care reform this year, while 54 percent prefer that Congress “do nothing on health care for now.” A whopping 57 percent oppose the health care reform legislation currently being debated in Congress. The truth is the Reid bill is disastrous public policy, and most Americans want Congress to “hit the restart button” and begin anew.

I never thought CNN would show public sentiment even more hostile to Obama than Fox, but the latest CNN poll finds that only 36 percent of the American people support the Senate version of Obamacare, while an astonishing 61% oppose it. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said it would increase the deficit, and a large majority say it will increase their taxes.

The smart money inside the beltway continues to be that health care legislation in some form will pass and be signed into law by President Obama. But the smart money has been wrong before. Obamacare appears to be in serious jeopardy of going the same way that Bill Clinton’s plan for health care did in 1993-1994. What is driving this downward spiral is the increasing conviction among Democrats that continuing to talk about health care is political suicide when voters are concerned about jobs and the economy. A huge new federal entitlement program that costs $2 trillion is not something that we can afford at a time of the worse recession in post-World War II history.

If Reid can’t herd the cats in the Senate and find a way to get to 60 votes for cloture, soon, then health care will slip into 2010, an election year. That was the last thing the Democrats wanted, and it portends political trouble for them in the off-year elections if it unfolds.

This uncontrollability—her rogue qualities—-are what explains the Palin phenomenon. Too many national politicians in both parties are automatons, over-coached, scripted by high-priced handlers, (in Obama’s case, tethered to the teleprompter), their language shaped by focus groups, their posture suggesting they are fearful of their own shadow. In a sea of programmed mannequins, Palin’s candor is refreshing, even disarmingly so. Little wonder that even as they lambaste her, the pundits and talking heads cannot resist talking about her—and they pine for the ratings and book sales she delivers.

In seconding the nomination of Grover Cleveland for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, former Union general and Wisconsin Congressman Edward S. Bragg enthused, “We love him for the enemies he has made.” He was referring to New York’s Tammany Hall machine, and like Cleveland, Palin ran as an anti-machine candidate, taking on the good-ole-boy network of the Alaska GOP when she ran for Governor in 2006. This is a second part of her appeal: she is beholden to no one except the voters.

The criticism of Palin’s book as self-serving is unfair and untrue. Certainly she settles scores; one would expect no less from a political memoir worth reading. But she is self-critical of her performance in the interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, even as she argues that it was poorly handled by the campaign. She also writes movingly of learning that she was carrying a Down Syndrome baby, and her empathy and understanding for women who find themselves in a troubled pregnancy and might consider abortion. The vignette reveals a capacity for self-awareness and for connecting with others that it is an important attribute in any leader. Palin chose life, and gave witness to her faith and her values with deeds that spoke louder than words.

Palin is in fact an archetype of American politics: the Joan of Arc candidate battling the forces that would seek to control her or bring her down. In Dark Horse, I wrote about a fictional woman vice presidential nominee named Betsy Hafer (the first woman on a national ticket since 1984). Hafer is a gifted instinctive politician, extremely attractive with a wardrobe to match, and has been a governor for less than two years and is thus relatively untested on the national scene. Chosen by the presidential nominee to unite his divided party and shake up a race he is losing, she slips up in several media interviews and is quarantined by her handlers and the campaign staff back at headquarters. After leaks panning her performance, she kicks several of the staff off her plane and starts flying around the country speaking freely and connecting with the voters as she pleases. Dark Horse was written in the spring of 2007 and published in June, 2008. When McCain selected Palin three months later, I nearly fell out of my chair. I’ll never tell who the real inspiration for the Hafer character was, but the narrative arc of Palin’s selection, meteoric rise, and then victimization by self-serving leakers who sought to blame her for the party’s defeat was all too predictable. Geraldine Ferraro experienced it a quarter century ago, and future national women politicians will endure similar mistreatment. The way the national media kicked around Palin (and to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton) suggested that sexism is still alive in our politics.

With “Going Rogue,” Palin gets to speak on her own, free from the restraints of a national campaign and unfiltered by the media gatekeepers. The book is well-written, honest, revealing, and compelling. What the future holds for Sarah Palin is anyone’s guess. But based on her governorship, the 2008 campaign, and the phenomenal success of her book, it certainly won’t be boring. My guess is that she will be a force in American politics for years to come.

Perhaps that is why the White House spin machine—personified by David Axelrod and David Plouffe—-went into overdrive to suggest that truly salient fact that came out of 2009 was the impending civil war between conservatives and moderates in the Grand Old Party.

This is utter nonsense. I certainly understand the desperation of surveying the wreckage after election night and looking for any silver lining in the disastrous outcome. But NY-23 was an aberration, not a pattern, and in so far as it represented any trend at all, it was a positive one for conservatives and ultimately for the Republican Party.

First, NY-23 was a special election caused by the selection by Obama of former Congressman John McHugh as Secretary of the Army. Under party rules, the GOP nominee was selected by a an executive committee of county chairman in the district—not by primary. Their selection, Dede Scozzafaza was not only to the left of her own party and the district, she was actually to the left of the Democratic nominee, Bill Owens. Scoz favored same-sex marriage and had voted for it twice in the state Senate (a position to the left of that of Barack Obama), while Owens demurred on gay marriage, favoring civil unions instead. Owens opposed card-check, Scoz favored it. Not surprisingly, conservatives chose to support Conservative nominee Doug Hoffman, and Scozzafaza’s campaign imploded.

It was an important message for conservatives to send to the Republican party. This was not a “raging war” on moderates in the GOP, as some in the media and the Democratic party have tried to claim. Everyone understands Reagan’s dictum that an 80 percent friend is not a 20% enemy. But conservatives cannot be expected to knock on doors and make phone calls for a candidate to the left of Barack Obama on key issues facing their state and nation.

I spoke to a Democratic campaign consultant who was involved in NY-23, and he told me he could not believe that the Republicans had nominated someone so far to the left, thus dividing the party. He also told me that their polling showed that Hoffman was on his way to victory until Scoz endorsed Owens in the closing days of the campaign. That, again, is an aberration, unlikely to be repeated in many key races in 2010 or beyond. It does happen (recall Senator John Warner’s support for Marshall Coleman in the 1994 U.S. Senate race in Virginia between Oliver North and Chuck Robb), but rarely.

The more likely future for the GOP was seen in Virginia, where a stalwart conservative, Bob McDonnell, won the strong backing of prominent moderates like former Congressman Tom Davis, Bobbie Kilberg, and John Warner. McDonnell never trimmed his philosophical sails and never back-tracked on his pro-family, tax-cutting, pro-growth views, but his moderate temperament and inclusive leadership style attracted the support of not only moderate Republicans and 2 out of every 3 independents, but even prominent Democrats like Sheila Johnson, wife of BET founder Bob Johnson. I never heard a single complaint from moderates in the party about McDonnells’ conservative views or his background as a Regent University graduate or favorite of the pro-family community. They respected his views and admired his ability to build bridges as a leader and problem-solver. Conservatives should look for more McDonnells in the years to come if they truly want to become a majority again.

The Republican Party is not a church. It does not promulgate doctrine and then exclude those who fail to share it. But political parties stand for something, or they will be unable to generate enthusiastic support from the volunteers needed to burn shoe leather and calories winning competitive elections. That was the real lesson of NY-23 for the Grand Old Party: stand for your principles.

On the eve of the 2009 elections, two angry white men have worked themselves into a froth. Both are liberals. Frank Rich, former New York Times theater critic and “butcher of Broadway” now directs his venom at those in politics, and especially conservatives. Rich claims that the surge of conservative Republican Doug Hoffman in New York’s 23rd district and Dede Scozzafava stepping aside signal that “GOP Stalinists,” a “wacky, paranoid cult” have invaded New York and launched “nothing less than a riotous and bloody national GOP civil war.” Read more here.

Mmmm. And I thought it was only a congressional race in upstate New York. At least Rich didn’t compare us to Mao.

The second angry white liberal male outraged at the turn of events in NY-23—Doug Hoffman now leads in most polls—is David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 campaign. He’s got a new book out, but is getting more questions launching his book tour about the 2009 elections. Plouffe doesn’t seem to have much interest in talking about the gubernatorial races. Who can blame him? Creigh Deeds has been thrown under the bus by the White House and trails by double digits in many polls. Jon Corzine is in a race too close to call in New Jersey after outspending his opponent Chris Christy three-to-one. No, what has Plouffe’s ire up is what he alleges is a full-blown effort to purge moderates and drive them from the Republican Party. He couldn’t say enough about it this morning on the Today show.

Here are the facts: eleven county Republican chairmen in the 23rd district chose a Scozzafava as the GOP nominee after interviewing the candidates. She is, to be charitable, far to the left of the center, not only of the Republican party, but of the district. As a state Senator, she voted repeatedly for higher taxes and more spending, supported Obama’s stimulus package, voted twice for same-sex marriage, and was endorsed by a party controlled by ACORN. Not surprisingly, voters in the district turned to a center-right candidate, Doug Hoffman, who after being rejected by the party bosses ran as the nominee of the Conservative Party. This is no different than James Buckley winning a Senate race in New York in 1970 as the Conservative nominee. The only thing this development signals is that the grassroots, not party bosses in smoke-filled rooms, should choose the party’s nominees. Which is why progressives pushed for party primaries in the early twentieth century—to give the people a voice. Are Rich and Plouffe now in favor of party bosses rather than the people choosing our leaders? I don’t remember them being similarly outraged when most of the Democratic party bosses lined up behind Hillary Clinton and the liberal grassroots of the party supported Obama.

Pete Wehner does a great job showing the paranoia and rage are actually on the left—and that “Mr. Rich’s tantrum” and Mr. Plouffe’s feigned outrage are really signs that conservatism is actually healthy and doing well.

When liberals get angry and start faxing helpful suggestions to the GOP and conservatives, you can be sure they don’t have either’s real interests at heart. My best advice to the GOP: ignore any advice offered by the media or Obama campaign operatives. They don’t want you to win. Listen to the conservative grassroots, embrace principle, and nominate candidates who stand for conservative values. You will be richly rewarded by the voters.

Did the speech work, which is to say, did it revive Obamacare? The preliminary evidence suggests that it did not. The latest Rasmussen survey shows an uptick of only 2 percent in support for Obama’s health care scheme, from 44 to 46 percent. Obama’s speech will likely lift his job approval and health care numbers for a while, but it will be ephemeral. Within a short period of time, the afterglow of the speech will fade, and we will be back to status quo antebellum.

The reason is simple. Obama’s problem can’t be solved with eloquence and speech-craft. The White House’s problem is not one of communications. It has to do with substance. The American people have reviewed the bidding on the health care issue, and they have decided (I believe with a certain finality) that they do not want a Big Government, one-size-fits-all solution from Washington that herds millions of people into a public plan and puts a bureaucrat between patients and doctors.

Most of the mainstream media’s focus (predictably) has been on Congressman Joe Wilson, who said during the speech, “You lie.” I am not defending Congressman Wilson’s remark, and, by the way, neither has he. The remark was ill-advised and inappropriate, and he swiftly apologized, as he should have. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and it was just as wrong for the President to tell falsehood after fib after misrepresentation after distortion about both his plan and his opponents’ opposition to it.

Obama’s speech was remarkable for its petulance, its partisanship, and its falsehoods. To put it mildly, President Obama told repeated falsehoods about his plan, falsehoods that were bald-faced, audacious, and shameless. Consider just a few of the dishonest statements in Obama’s speech:

First, he said, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.” If so, then the President should have announced his public opposition to the Senate leadership bill and H.B. 3200, the so-called tri-committee bill which is the House leadership’s approved legislation, months ago. In June the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the legislation will increase the budget deficit by $240 billion over the next ten years. That’s just the beginning. A new study by the Lewin Group finds that in the second ten years, it will increase the deficit by $1 trillion. The White House has publicly praised and supported both these bills. So Obama stated a whopping $1.24 trillion falsehood.

Second, Obama said he would not cut Medicare and affect basic care for seniors. On the defensive, he said that “Medicare is another issue that’s been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.” He called Medicare a “sacred trust” and said “I will protect Medicare.” But the Obama plan includes $600 billion in unspecified Medicare cuts. It destroys Medicare Advantage with $250 billion in cuts, decimating a pro-consumer option that one out of every four seniors takes advantage of and allows them to choose the best insurance and doctor for them.

Even the Associated Press has called Obama on this lie. AP reported that “although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That’s particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage. Supporters contend that providers could absorb the cuts by improving how they operate and wouldn’t have to reduce benefits or pass along costs. But there’s certainly no guarantee they wouldn’t.”

Third, Obama took a cheap shot at Sarah Palin and others who have pointed out that the health care rationing implicit in the plan combined with panels of experts approving of certain procedures that allow younger patients to receive care while certain older patients are denied care based on a “quality of life” standard will lead inexorably to the denial of care to the elderly and the dying. Obama said —falsely—that Palin and others have claimed that “we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens.” This is totally false, and Obama knows it. What critics have pointed out is that seniors will be required to submit regularly to “end of life” counseling sessions (detailed on page 425 of H.B. 3200) that, combined with cost controls and rationing of care, could lead to them being denied life-saving treatment.

Moreover, as health care expert Betsy McCaughey, chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, has pointed out, the bill includes “substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on a patient’s age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of treatment is divided by the number of years (called QUALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit.”

Fourth, Obama claimed that the bill does not use taxpayer funds for abortion. This is also false. The Democrats rejected amendments in a House committee that would have specifically excluded abortion from coverage under the so-called government option. In its place, the Democrats took the private portion of the premium (not the public subsidy) and specified that only those funds could be used for abortion services. This is an accounting gimmick. Funds in an insurance policy are fungible, and the fact is that abortion will be massively subsidized with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds for the first time in U.S. history.

Fifth, Obama claimed that his plan did not provide care for illegal immigrants. Here again, false. By rejecting a Republican amendment requiring proof of legal residence prior to receiving care under the government-run plan, the Democrats have opened the door for non-citizens and non-legal residents to receive care for which they have not paid into the system. If one refuses to require proof of citizenship or legal residence, one cannot claim to limit benefits to only citizens.

Joe Wilson has apologized; Obama has not. And when it comes to calling your opponents liars, Obama has no peer. He did so Wednesday night repeatedly. He previously held a conference call with liberal faith groups and accused his opponents of “bearing false witness.” He has told falsehoods about his own plan, repeatedly and shamelessly. As he has done so, he has not only taken the glow off his “Hope, Change” campaign mantra, he has diminished his office. That is a loss not only for his political team, but for all Americans.

At first glance, these ham-handed attacks appear to be gaffes by desperate Democrats,  but it turns out there is a method to their madness. Their strategy is to demonize and stigmatize social and free market conservatives.  Why?  Because they are key to a Republican comeback.  In the post-mortems after the 2008 elections, many pundits and prognosticators could hardly contain themselves.  They hurriedly wrote the obituary of the Republican party and especially the conservative coalition of small business owners, gun-owners, and social conservatives who propelled the GOP majority from 1994 to 2006.  Those most enthusiastically dismissed were the social conservatives, the evangelicals and pro-family Roman Catholics who played a central role in electing and re-electing George W. Bush.  In 2004, voters of faith comprised 23 percent of the entire electorate and gave 78 percent of their votes to Bush, while only 21 percent supported to John Kerry.  Bush won the Catholic vote against the first Catholic nominee for president in 44 years and carried every state and every electoral vote in the South in both elections, where the plurality of social conservatives are found.

But 2008, we were solemnly informed, marked the end of the so-called “wedge issues” (read: values issues).  In this formulation, Barack Obama appeared as the Great Healer, walking on the water, bridging the divide between the secular left and the devout right through the power of his eloquence and the unique appeal of his multi-cultural background.

But then it all came apart.  Obama began to govern from the extreme left, overplaying his hand by pushing too many experiments in liberal social engineering too quickly.  The initiatives tumbled out of the White House in a rushed jumble: the failed stimulus package, a budget that blew a $1.8 trillion hole in the deficit, the cap and tax bill that included a massive tax increase on the middle class, a government take-over of the automobile industry, and now health care.  The Sotomayor nomination only deepened the growing unease of the electorate, as I have pointed out earlier, galvanizing conservative opposition (they opposed Sotomayor by a staggering 68-17% margin) and alienating independents.

Obama’s stratospheric approval ratings have plummeted, dropping an average of 10 points across the board, even more among seniors.  This has provided an opening for the Republican opposition to be heard on a range of issues on which the American people have not listened since 2005.

Some commentators who celebrated Obama’s ascension find this development deeply disturbing.  Joe Klein bemoans what he calls the “Return of the Hot-Button Issues.” Klein decries the fact that right-wing demagogues are stoking the fires of cultural resentment.  He goes on: “We are beset by wars and economic distress, and we no longer have the luxury of ceding these discussions to demagogues and fundraising interest groups. It’s time to move on.”

But most observers are missing the more salient and interesting development.  Social conservatives are increasingly addressing a broader issues agenda.  The initial spark was the tea parties in April, attended by up to 2 million people.  Many, though not all, of these activists were social conservatives organized on social networking sites like Facebook.  They were dismissed by opinion elites as rabble-rousers.  That, it turns out, was a miscalculation.  Next came health care, in which social conservatives have made an important contribution to the debate by addressing the moral blind spots in Obama’s plan, including taxpayer-funded abortion, rationing of care for the elderly, and mandatory “end of life” counseling.  It turned out that the weak underbelly of government-run health care was not its high taxes and exploding debt, but the extent to which it violated basic values and assaulted the moral sensibilities of millions of Americans.

The bottom line is that voters primarily motivated by their values will not go away.  They are a persistent bunch.  They have now gained a place at the table, have been seasoned by the experience of building (and now losing) a governing majority, and they are going to speak to a broad range of issues, from the economy to climate change to health care.  They will likely be at the center of any GOP revival of fortunes.  No amount of name-calling or intimidation will make them go away.

So far, 30 Republican Senators have announced that they will vote against Sotomayor’s confirmation. The last time a Supreme Court nominee selected by a Democratic president received more votes against confirmation was 1894.

Those 30 Senators deserve an enormous amount of credit for standing up to Judge Sotomayor’s boosters in the Senate and the some liberal commentators in the media who have perpetuated the falsehood that a vote against Sotomayor is somehow a vote against Hispanics. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Republican Senators have consistently praised Judge Sotomayor’s background and personal story, which we all admire. The message they are sending concerning their votes is clear: Judge Sotomayor’s record of speeches, law review articles, and judicial decisions demonstrates that she will not set aside her personal feelings and politics to decide cases based on the written Constitution.

It takes a lot of chutzpah for some in the media, like Thomas B.
Edsall of the Huffington Post, to suggest that Republicans are risking alienating Hispanic voters by opposing Sotomayor’s nomination. It was, after all, the Republicans who sought to elevate Miguel Estrada, a Honduran immigrant who rose from poverty to editor of the Harvard Law Review, to sit on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee delayed and ultimately obstructed Estrada’s nomination with partisan political attacks and ultimately the threat of a filibuster. They waged a smear campaign against Estrada that still ranks as one of the low moments in the modern history of the Senate. Republicans in the Senate fought like champions to save his nomination. The GOP’s record of fighting for Hispanics to sit on our nation’s highest courts is clear.

Another lie being spread by Judge Sotomayor’s boosters and their friends in the media is that a vote against Judge Sotomayor will result in a “backlash” at the polls. This cliché exists only in a fact-free zone populated by arm-chair pundits, and the opinion research data roundly refutes it.

According to a Zogby poll released last week, the American people are evenly divided on Sotomayor’s nomination. (49% support her confirmation and 49% oppose it.) She even fails to garner the support of a majority of Hispanics, who are divided 47% for and 43% against, well within the poll’s margin of error. In fact, a recent Gallup poll found that President Obama’s support among Hispanics dropped 7% after the week of Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, suggesting any attempt to rally Hispanics with her nomination failed.

Her nomination has, however, galvanized gun-owners (opposed 67% to 30%), Independents (opposed 55% to 44%) and small business owners (opposed 52% to 42%). There has been a startling implosion of Sotomayor’s support among both core conservative voters and the swing voters who will decide the 2010 and 2012 elections.

This kind of opposition to a Supreme Court nominee is worth noting.
According to Gallup, “[w]ith only 9% of Americans expressing no opinion about Sotomayor’s fate, the lowest seen for any nominee, she now garners more opposition than any Supreme Court nominee of the past two decades, except for the unsuccessful Harriet Miers.”

The 30 Senators who have decided to vote against Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation are on solid ground. The Republican Senators and red-state Democrats who have decided to support her, in contrast, should be very concerned what price they may pay.

The 3 Republican Senators who have yet to announce their intentions – Gregg (NH), Murkowski (AK), and Voinovich (OH) – are in a delicate situation, because their vote for Sotomayor could engender alienation from the GOP brand among core and swing voters at the very moment when Obama’s political fortunes are waning due to a weak economy and health care reform.

Specifically, if the remaining undecided Republican Senators decide to vote for Sotomayer, they could do real and lasting damage to the Republican Party writ large in the following ways:

Ensures the next nominee will be even worse. There has never been a Supreme Court nominee who has rejected the rule of law as brazenly as Judge Sotomayor, who literally said in her writings that race and gender can and should affect the facts that judges choose to see in deciding cases. If Republicans cannot stand against a judicial activist with such out-of-the-mainstream views, and who was reversed by the Supreme Court in a major decision on quotas issued while her nomination was pending (Ricci), then Obama will have more incentive to nominate someone as bad, or even worse, the next time around.

Gives future nominees license to evade and obfuscate. To be charitable, in her confirmation hearings Judge Sotomayor engaged in a fair amount of doublespeak, with countless confirmation conversions of convenience. If Judge Sotomayor is confirmed with significant bipartisan support, future nominees will learn the lesson that they can flip-flop on damaging views and statements without fear of
contradiction. This will breed cynicism, undermine the integrity of
the confirmation process, and deflate enthusiasm among core supporters going into the critical 2010 elections.

Discourages the GOP base. The grassroots have spoken. The NRA, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, Americans for Tax Reform, the small business community, and other critical elements of the GOP grassroots all oppose this nominee. These groups are speaking for grassroots conservatives, who oppose Sotomayor by a whopping 62 % to 16 % margin (Rasmussen, July 16-17).

Energizes the White House with a big win. If the President is perceived as winning big on Sotomayor because of a weak and divided GOP caucus, it gives him crucial momentum for the government-run health care, cap-and-tax, and other liberal legislative priorities.

In sum, Judge Sotomayor’s personal story is inspiring. Republican leaders should emphatically and frequently express admiration for her background and achievements as a Latina woman. But her views are out of the mainstream and her judicial record and previous statements and writings are those of a judicial activist. Not only does the GOP base and Independents oppose her because of those views, but Hispanic support for her nomination is underwhelming at best. A vote against her confirmation is not a vote against her personally. It is a vote against the imposition of quotas by judicial fiat, the reliance on foreign law by U.S. courts, more liberal protections for unlimited, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, and the erosion of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Republicans and red-state Democratic Senators who oppose her will strengthen their position. Republicans who support Sotomayor may come to regret having done so, either because a conservative candidate could challenge them in a primary or they generate only lax support from the base in a general election.

For Republicans, the Sotomayor nomination is a political Rorschach test. If they fail it, the consequences in 2010 and beyond could be enormous. If they pass it, combined with Obama’s falling poll numbers, growing queasiness among Blue Dog Democrats, and a weak economy, their fortunes could turn around far quicker than they think.

No one knows what the future holds and there is plenty of time during the August recess for the ground to shift multiple times, but we may have reached an inflection point in the health care reform debate. Every published poll shows significant slippage in Obama’s job approval and specifically his handling of health care, where his numbers are upside down. NBC News’ political blog, normally in the tank for Obama, said it best: “Speaking of health care, our poll also shows that the more Obama has campaigned on the issue, the worse his numbers have become.”

Indeed, health care is dragging down the Democratic brand. As Byron York points out, “During the Bush administration, Democrats made huge gains in some important Republican areas. For example, on the question of which party would do a better job in handling the federal budget deficit, Democrats held a 19-point advantage in a November 2005 Journal poll, a 25-point advantage in July 2007, and a 22-point advantage in January 2008. Now all that has changed. In the new poll, the results have completely turned around, and Republicans hold a six-point advantage. On the related issue of controlling government spending, in July 2007, Democrats held a 16-point advantage. In the new poll, Republicans hold a nine-point lead.”

A few weeks ago, the media was rapturously writing the obituary of the Republican Party. Now the implosion of Obama and the Democrats because of their reckless policies on the economy, the failed stimulus package, government-run health care, Sotomayor, and cap-and-tax that is restoring the GOP brand on spending and the deficit. This is not enough by itself to turn around the GOP’s fortunes. But it is a huge opening and a major opportunity for the Republicans to regain its credibility on fiscal responsibility that seemed impossible just a short time ago.

Pollster Glen Bolger points out  that it isn’t just the top line numbers but the intensity of opposition to Obama that is so striking. Analyzing a recent NPR poll , Bolger observes, “Voters oppose Obama’s health care plan — just 42% favor it, while 47% oppose it….[and] with only 25% strongly favoring what they are hearing so far, and 39% strongly opposed, Obama is losing the intensity fight. Certainly a lot depends on the details of the bill, but voters clearly question whether Obama is more snake oil salesman on health care than he is successful faith healer.

There is more. The NBC/WSJ poll found that 39% (a plurality of the sample) think Obamacare would make health care worse—a 15 point increase since April. Only 41% of the American people approve of Obama’s handling of health care, a number eerily identical to Bill Clinton’s health care job approval number in 1994, prior to the Republican landslide in the off-year elections.

Obama’s response to these plummeting poll numbers, as always, is to try to recapture the lost magic of his campaign. It has been, so far, a disjointed and lackluster performance. The mood music is still there, but Obama sings off-key. This week he traveled to Bristol, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, where he had big crowds in the 2008 campaign . Smooth, cool Obama sounded petulant. “Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I’m tired of hearing that,” Obama complained. “I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor; if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody, you know?”

There is only one problem: Obama wasn’t telling the truth. The Waxman bill in the House makes it clear (see pp. 15-17) that persons on existing private health insurance plans are only grandfathered in for the first five years, and only if their employer or insurance policy does not change. After that, they are herded into the so-called “public option,” read: government-run health care. So Obama’s definition of “scaring people” is telling them the truth about his health care plan.

In the end, Obama’s health care problem isn’t fiscal. This is a moral issue. He wants government bureaucrats, not patients and doctors, to make the vital decisions about our health care. And he wants those same bureaucrats to render judgments on the relative value of the lives of our loved ones, especially seniors, in a way that is contrary to our belief in the sanctity of every human life. This is why his health care plan is currently on life support.

To sign the petition opposing Obamacare, go here.

But health care reform is no longer inevitable, as was the case just six weeks ago. The reason is simple. The numbers simply do not add up. As Nina Owcharenko from the Heritage Foundation recently pointed out in a panel discussion on Capitol Hill sponsored by CNP, Inc., health care reform proceeds on two tracks: policy, and pay-fors. One must formulate a policy as to how to cover the uninsured, and then one must pay for it. This is what makes health care reform so arduous and difficult, not, as Obama posits, the “special interests,” the defenders of the status quo, and the big bad health care lobbyists. Obama and the Democrats can’t come up with the money to pay for their pie-in-the-sky vision.

Charlie Rangel tried a surtax on the “rich” (read: small business) and Nancy Pelosi is desperately trying to walk it back. Max Baucus tried taxing employer-provided health care benefits and Obama slapped that down (he had attacked McCain for proposing the same during the 2008 campaign). So the numbers do not add up, and there is no way in a recessionary economy to fund free or heavily subsidized health care for all. Even worse, the Congressional Budget Office now is on record as saying that the Obama plan will not decrease health care costs at all, and in fact will increase them.

Indeed, the more we learn about the Democratic vision of health care, the less we like. The Congressional Budget Office has laid bare the fiscal and policy disaster that will result. A new analysis of the CBO data in Roll Call (Steven Dennis, “Analysis: House Health Care Bill’s Price Tag Tops $1.6 Trillion,” Roll Call, 7/20/09) shows the situation is even worse than previously thought. The House bill will actually cost $1.6 trillion, raise taxes $800 billion, blow a $238 billion hole in the deficit, and leave 37 million people uninsured. Now we know why the White House was so insistent that the bills clear the Senate and the House before the August recess. Obama wants to move fast so that the American people don’t find out the facts and don’t move to oppose it.

Unfortunately for Obama, it may already be too late. The new Gallup poll shows that people disapprove of his handling of health care by a 50 to 44 percent margin. The more they learn, the less they like it. And August will find many Democratic Congressmen and Senators at town hall meetings hearing from their constituents. Make sure you make your voice heard.

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