For months, we’ve been hearing about the sour mood of U.S, conservatives, with left-leaning activists and liberal commentators savoring (and promoting) the possibility that many of their opponents on the right will express their frustration by abandoning the GOP on November 7th. As Election Day approaches, however, the evidence accumulatesthat dissatisfied and restless Republicans have begun to come home, recoiling at the very real prospect of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and second in line to the Presidency. Nevertheless, those of us who travel in conservative circles can still hear some grumbling and gnashing of teeth, accompanied by tired (and tiresome) arguments on behalf of desertion from the field of political battle.

By now, we all know the lines: the Washington Republicans have become indistinguishable from Democrats (they’re all “Republicrats” and “Demicans”--- yuck, yuck, yuck!); they need to be punished for overspending and failing to halt abortion, immigration, deficits and stem cell research; the GOP deserves blame for waging a cowardly, politically correct, inconclusive war in Iraq; Bush and his buddies are deliberately undermining our national sovereignty because they are secretly controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations, Skull and Bones, the Bohemian Grove, the Illuminati and other avatars of the New World Order; and the only way to get Republicans to develop backbone is to hurt them at the polls, sweeping away the current crop of panty-waists and globalists and replacing them with ideologically committed he-men who can reconnect with the American mainstream and then, in some future confrontation, win decisive victories against the newly energized Democrats.

Whatever the merits in these claims, most Americans who place themselves to the right of the Kerry-Pelosi-Howard Dean-George Soros Democrats are coming to realize that we can’t afford two years (or more) of leftist lunacy in Congress for the sake of some future (and far from certain) return to power. The current situation presents solid, undeniable reasons that this election amounts to a Very Big Deal and all conservatives of conscience must make a point of voting on November 7th.

Herewith, eight concrete reminders of why your participation counts:

1. Judges. On April 20th of next year, Justice John Paul Stevens (arguably the most liberal member of the current Supreme Court, will celebrate his 87thirthday. The actuarial tables suggest that the chances are excellent that he will vacate his high office some time before President Bush leaves the White House – at a time when Justice Stevens is just two months shy of his 89th birthday! No decision will impact the long-term future of this Republic more substantially than the choice of a successor to this veteran jurist. If the Democrats have taken over the Senate, with Pat Leahy of Vermont as the new chair of the Judiciary Committee, the chances of winning confirmation for any justice in the Alito-Roberts mold are nil. Many conservatives felt (rightly) troubled by the aborted nomination of Harriet Miers; but even this sort of “stealth nominee” would find it difficult to escape a Democratic Senate.

Whatever our complaints about other aspects of the Bush record, his judicial nominations have been incontestably superb—vastly better than his father’s, than Nixon’s, and even than Reagan’s (remember Sandra Day O’Connor? Anthony Kennedy?). With one more nomination, the high court would enjoy a clear strict constructionist majority (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and……). But sulking conservatives want to give up a once-in-a-lifetime chance to overrule Roe v. Wade and other examples of catastrophic judicial overreach because you’re angry about Mark Foley’s e-mails? And what about all the dozens of appellate and federal district court nominations that will come up in the next two years? These appointments will help to shape the federal judiciary for a generation, with incalculable impact long after any current complaints have been forgotten.

2. Encouraging the Enemy. The only way to win wars is to convince your adversaries that further resistance is useless. Democratic victories in the House and/or Senate would help persuade Islamo-Nazi terrorists that they are, in fact, winning the war for US public opinion. No one questions that the jihadists closely monitor our domestic politics. Why else would they so conspicuously intensify their violent attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan just weeks before a crucial election? They also clearly want Democrats to win, not just because they hate Bush but because they clearly perceive the irresolution, confusion and urge to appease of the liberal faction in the current debates. Even if the Democrats resist these temptations once in power (after all, they would still face two more years of a Bush White House as a block to their more irresponsible impulses) the much-ballyhooed fact of their political triumph would greatly encourage anti-American forces everywhere and thereby prolong this war.

3. Security. When it comes to vigorous interrogation and wiretapping of terrorist suspects, more than 70% of Congressional Democrats opposed even the compromise policies jointly shaped by President Bush and Senator McCain. Liberal leaders have been outspoken in demanding more “oversight” for our dedicated and phenomenally successful counter-terrorist fighters. The possibility of endless investigations, and even prosecution, regarding Guantanamo and other efforts to force information from deadly anti-American combatants, very obviously threatens all progress in the war on terror. Disaffected Republicans must seriously consider whether they want our battle against al-Qaeda to proceed in a more timid, limited and legalistic way, because with Democrats controlling Congress (and specifically its investigative and funding powers) that is precisely what we are going to get.

4. The Economy. There’s no doubt that Democrats will raise taxes – they’ve pledged to do so and no veto threat could stop them, since all they need to do is to sit tight and to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. It’s not certain that GOP control will bring further tax reductions, or even protect all of those enacted in the last six years, but it is certain that Democrats will move in the tax-hike direction. Combined with Nancy Pelosi’s promise to raise the minimum wage by two-dollars and hour within the first four days (one hundred hours) of taking the Speaker’s gavel, and of sharply increasing spending for federally subsidized college loans, Medicaid and other social programs, the Democratic tax increases could easily provide the economic jolt to bring the current boom to an abrupt halt. The Dems proudly announce they want more governmental “supervision” of the economy – concerning energy, environmental regulations, labor rules, “gender equity,” family leave, and so forth. Conservatives understand that this sort of growth in federal power hardly constitutes a reliable formula for prosperity. And why, exactly, would anyone on the right support the huge boosts in federal college spending that would provide a vast transfer of wealth from ordinary, middle-American taxpayers to universities that represent islands of unreconstructed leftism within the body politic? Continued...