The Gerahtyite Manifesto

That's what Hugh's post today imploring Mark Tapscott to reconsider his position on immigration, spending and the future of the GOP is. Simply put it's the best, most concise statement of why November matters that I've yet to read.

Hugh's emphasis is on the courts. While I understand and appreciate the stake there, my focus is on the War, of which Iraq is but a part. Though the emphasis be different, the underlying message is the same: The stakes are too high and the cost of such a self-inflicted wound simply too much, making the prospect of taking a dive in November appear foolishness of near-epic proportions.

The courts do matter that much, and the consequences of losing the majority in the Senate or even the margin in the Senate that makes the Constitutional Option viable are vast and very troubling.

Do you really care about the abuse of eminent domain? The absurd decisions stripping "under God" from the Pledge or the tiny cross from the city seal of Los Angeles because of a threat from the ACLU?How about the executive's ability to conduct the war and keep unlawful combatants from clogging the courts with their demands for due process for terrorists?

Do you think that farmers should lose their fields to endangered flies, parents their custody rights to grandparents, parochial schools their eligibility for vouchers, activists --of left and right-- their right to speak to the FEC/FCC?

The list goes on and on, and the left's judges don't give up and go home...

Retirements and illnesses can change this court in an instant, and if the Senate's GOP majority has diminished or even vanished, the course of the country's history will be dramatically altered...

Like every other goal worth pursuing, returning the federal judiciary to its modest and appropriate role, as well as the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause totheir intended operations, requires enormous patience over multiple presidencies, and there is always the possibility that the project is not possible given the seemingly inevitable tendency of jurists to aggregate more and more authority to themselves over time. Self-denying public servants are rare, and the effect of robing seems to be destructive of the ability to read Article I and II clearly.

But giving up the game is not the answer --electing more principled center-right conservatives is the answer.

Soxblog echoes similar sentiments, focusing like me on the War:

FOR ME, THE ANALYSIS GOES TO basic principles. Namely, what is the biggest issue of the day?

The biggest issue of the day from history's viewpoint will undoubtedly be civilization's struggle with radical Islam. We are at war with Radical Islam. If you don't believe that, let me offer a less controversial assertion - Radical Islam is at war with us...

In some ways, I sympathize with Tapscott's formulation. It would be tough to shed any tears if Lincoln Chafee were sent packing. Hell, I'll go all in -it would be tough to weep if the Republican Party got as a reward for its incompetent twelve year stewardship of the House the demotion to minority party that it has so completely earned.

But unfortunately, we don't have time for party purification at the moment. History's moving too fast. We can't take two years off for John Conyers to mount impeachment proceedings while the liberal blogosphere does multiple victory laps...

Our enemies will not be taking the next two years off-- of that you can be sure. Friends, we live in consequential times. To paraphrase a great man, you go to war with the Party you have, not the Party you wish you had.

In 1992 Conservatives abandoned Bush I because they felt he had abandoned them. However much a bad choice in many ways that might have been, it wasn't a fatal error. I fear that returning Democrats to power in Congress in one or both of the it's houses will damage this nation immeasurably in the coming years.

"Slow down people! Don't be hasty, don't be rash...there are bigger political issues at stake here.

"This is not 1992, history hasn't just ended. The political price of 'sending a message' has risen dramatically in the last several years and such a tactic that would put Democrats back into any positions of power jeopardizes efforts you yourself championed in the last 5-plus years in the judiciary and sets up a self-fulfilling Iraq-is-Vietnam pullout scenario that will damage the US for years to come in the war on terror.

"Simply put, we can't afford our righteous indignation; the political price of returning to Clintonesque Democrat policies of the 1990's is just too high. There's a war to win."