I have an oped in today’s Washington Times on conservatives contending for the youth vote.

I also have a post over at RedState on Rod Blagojevich and President-Elect Obama’s short honeymoon, which happens to be today’s AOL Political Machine poll question (the poll isn’t live yet as I’m sending this out, but it will be later).

My latest op-ed at the Washington Times concerns America’s new status as a center-left nation.

It is not all Mr. McCain’s fault - supporters of small government and the free market have simply failed to make their case to voters. It took a plumber from Toledo to make even a dent in Mr. Obama’s leftist pleasantries, prompting right-leaning voters old enough to remember the Soviet Union as more than an ironic fashion statement to recoil in shock with a cry of “Why, that’s, that’s socialism!” Yet on Election Day, these voters found themselves outnumbered, and not by small margins. They were outnumbered not just by young voters attracted to Mr. Obama’s celebrity or minority voters attracted to his historical nature - though they are legion - but by voters who are tired of the status quo, who have heard no case for the free market on the national stage in a generation, and who want to give Mr. Obama’s policies a shot, and see what happens.

Read the rest of it here.

An apt bit of doggerel, I think, for the coming years.

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

-Rudyard Kipling

In an election cycle that saw the explosion of “Fact Check” articles written from thinly-disguised partisan bias, there is one fact that the overwhelming majority of voters going to the polls on Tuesday cannot deny: The 2008 election will finally end.

Regardless of the outcome, we all should be thankful for this fact, if only for the sake of the battered American psyche.

Some academics over the years have intoned that the voting process itself can be considered a legal act of peaceful revolution, in keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-cited musing that “A little rebellion now and then…is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” If this comparison is accurate, then the only logical conclusion in the aftermath of this contest is that, in the modern age, a little democracy now and then is bad medicine indeed for the mental health of America.

America is so very tired of it all – tired of the hacks, the flacks, and the attacks. Ah, for the older, simpler days of politics, when dirty-fingered men would hand out pamphlets on the street corner with more veracity than the accusations of the 24-hour networks.

Closing the book on the 2008 election would take the strength of a full grown elephant and donkey, yoked in tandem, if the volume held a full accounting of the twists and travails of this never-ending contest, with full appendices of fiends and follies.

What a range of surprises the bizarre tome would contain. How could even the wisest minds of Washington have predicted these two candidates, even a year ago, would emerge from the primary season as the party nominees? How could they have predicted that their stances on the war in Iraq, the largest contributing factor to each man’s victory, would barely be a topic of mention in the final weeks of the campaign, pushed aside by the controversy of an Alaska Governor’s fashion choices and the economic viewpoints of a Toledo plumber?

How could they have predicted that John McCain, for years the Republican most popular with the press, would become a jilted lover? How could they predict that Barack Obama, based on fewer than 200 days experience in the U.S. Senate, could predict with a messianic aplomb unseen since the days of William Jennings Bryan, that his election would be retold to children in decades hence as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” with a straight face?

Perhaps most shocking of all: who could have predicted that this cycle, featuring two men who repeatedly declared their ability to unite the country in bipartisan spirit in the wake of eight divisive years, would put the charge of “Socialism” back in common usage?

Speaking to one of his glorious rallies on Wednesday, Sen. Obama claimed that “By the end of the week, [Sen. McCain] will be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

There’s only one problem with that line, of course: Sen. Obama isn’t talking about sharing his sandwich as President. He’s talking about sharing yours.

As the overwhelming favorite on Tuesday, Sen. Obama stands to emerge from this race with the most ethereal presidential mandate of the modern era. How can one give a mandate to a party headed by a politician who insists his election alone will accomplish his policy goals? As the old song goes, he doesn’t want to set the world on fire – he just wants to spark a flame in your heart. And spark it he has - but if the polls are to be believed, it’s very unlikely this spark will transfer to Senate Democrats, who may gain as few as 4 net seats in an election cycle where a 60-vote filibuster proof majority had once seemed a foregone conclusion.

Sen. Obama’s model for success, in other words, is a model dependent entirely on the person of Barack Obama. It is not exactly a model for a new Democratic majority.

Consider former Gov. Mark Warner, poised to win Virginia by a significant margin, as the contrast. In him, you see the model for a pro-capitalist Democratic majority that recognizes the center-right nature of the electorate. Where Warner once denounced social conservatives and gun rights voters as “threatening to what it means to be an American,” he went on to earn “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association, and proved to be a centrist on fiscal issues. Gov. Warner has no buoyant cult of personality around him – his keynote speech to the Democratic Convention earlier this year was widely viewed as a flop – but rather a practical resume of solid government work.

In Gov. Warner, we see the kind of pragmatic politician who represents the policy viewpoints of a permanent Democrat majority. But in Sen. Obama, we see the kind of hubristic politician who could very well squander an electoral victory – attained not so much thanks to his policies or celebrity charisma as fatigue over President George W. Bush – by overreaching.

A regrouped conservative movement, likely to have an even firmer hold on the GOP, will be ready if he does. The successful politicians on the right in 2008 almost all share one attribute: a populist streak that is very strong and vibrant. There’s no question that, as we saw in ‘92-93, the next 2-4 years will find this third of the GOP increase the strength of this variety of politics.

Today, the American people are sending a mandate for change. But getting them to agree on what the word “change” means, and what government results from it, is a very difficult thing. If Sen. Obama makes the mistake of believing that his election represents a mandate for redistribution of wealth, for socialized medicine, for a reintroduction of the welfare state through tax credits to those who pay nothing…he may soon find that his electoral coalition is more delicate than he imagined. Matt Yglesias is already urging him on toward this course, suggesting that this election will grant an unrestrained mandate to American progressives.

The right can only hope the new overlords believe the hype.

We shall see. For now, be thankful the election that would not die is finally, at long last, proving to be mortal. Come Tuesday, put the yard signs away for a bit, and say farewell to our most modern folly. Americans now should take their cue from T.S. Eliot, and saying “Well now that’s done, and I’m glad it’s over,” put a record on the gramophone.

Video by Mary Katherine Ham.

Since I live in the newly swing state of Virginia and specifically in very swinging Loudoun County, and have voted here in every election since I could vote, allow me to point out what would be obvious to anyone who lived here: the amount of enthusiasm for John McCain among the people who get voters to the polls and determine whether this county is red or not is almost nonexistent.

Part of it’s ideological, in the sense that many of the conservative activists in Virginia are more Lou Dobbsian than you might expect (there’s a reason Huckabee beat McCain by a 2-1 margin in Roanoke), but it says something that I can’t even find as many volunteers in this county as George Allen had in the final days after Macaca - the volunteer base was one of the reasons Allen made a late surge, making up a good deal of ground, and still almost won here running against a self-styled centrist Democrat in a year that was terrible for Republicans. Allen only lost the county in 2006 by 7,000 votes, less than 3 tenths of a percent. His total margin of loss statewide was 10,000 votes, less than .5 tenths of a percent. In other words: Loudoun alone determined Webb’s victory.

The Obama campaign has deluged us with smiling volunteers, most bussed in from other places. I got a notebook-sized book, with a hand-written message, left at my door while I was at church the other day. It is the finest piece of political literature I’ve ever seen. It’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. All flowing Gotham font and perfect image selection. It makes Kitten look like the most moderate, experienced Democrat you’ve ever seen. You want to put it on your coffee table.

McCain’s people left a torn door hanger shoved against my door with a picture of him looking like he was constipated. Knocking on doors on a Sunday morning - well, that’s fine for the Democrats, but for the Republicans? Please.

This year, the Republican Party selected the most ideologically moderate, media-friendly nominee of my lifetime. They picked him because, like Dole in 96, he was the guy who deserved his shot. They picked him because they thought the fact that he’d made a career out of stabbing his party in the back would befriend him to the horde or make him difficult for the New York Times to attack.

They thought wrong. As Mark Salter expresses it in what should be held as THE classic rant of this cycle to Jeffrey Goldberg - and it’s all true! - it’s not McCain who’s changed, it’s the media that’s covering him.

JG: What do you think of the assertion that McCain is exploiting his P.O.W. experiences?

MS: I find that very offensive. Barack Obama gets to tell his story why? Because it’s more potent?

JG: How are you feeling about the press these days?

MS: Look, I think, starting with the Democratic primary, there has been a different standard for Obama than there has been for any candidate running against Barack Obama. And maybe this should have set off more warning bells with me. I think much of the media has a thumb on the scale for Obama. I think the thumb has been there the entire time. There are many honorable exceptions, I don’t mean to tar everybody, but I think there’s one standard for us, and one standard for Obama. He has run more negative ads than McCain has run ads. They run from the quite misleading to the blatantly untrue.

Once he stopped jabbing GOPers in the eye with a sharp stick and started running as the nominee of a party, the media reacted:

JG: Looking back, do you think there was something false about your salad days with the press?

MS: No, I’m trying not to draw general lessons about the press or us or the meaning of life out of all of this. Otherwise I’d despair. I think the media is driven by a need to see this history happen. And I think they’ve rationalized it, they think they’re on the level with McCain, that he’s not the old McCain. But he is the old McCain. He just doesn’t know what happened to the old press corps. They rationalize a reason to go get him. Every Obama attack they carry. Every McCain criticism of Obama they rush to blunt even before Obama does.

JG: Putting aside Palin, is one of the problems you’re facing the fact that there’s no foreign policy discussion right now?

MS: Iraq was supposed to be the issue of the campaign. We assumed it was our biggest challenge. Funny how things work.

The Republicans ignored the fact that with the exception of the surge, John McCain has been out of step with the base about just about every policy he’s chosen to stick his neck out to support. He’s just burned too many bridges along the way to this moment. If you don’t get the people who can deliver 2,000 home schoolers on 24 hours notice to support you, you can’t win this state.

Nowhere is McCain’s wrongness about one of his key issues, the public financing of elections, going to hurt him more than in the Virginia TV market - Sunday afternoon, over the course of multiple football games, I saw what felt like 75 Obama ads - three separate ones, alternating, repeating every commercial break - messages of fix your health care, cut your taxes, McCain is a fraud. I did not see a single McCain ad. Not one.

The public financing gambit from McCain was always based on the proposition that, with the right candidates in either party, an agreement of restrictions on the weapons at hand would be good for democracy. It would enable both candidates to engage in a dozen town hall meetings, which McCain loves, and spread their message in limited and less negative form. But when you count “1, 2, 3″ and drop all your weapons but a Bowie knife, and the other guy is standing there with a Surface to Air Missile on his shoulder, saying “Eh, I changed my mind,”, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

Winning Northern Virginia exurb voters, like winning most elections outside of an urban environment, is done by having volunteers, activists, and targeted GOTV efforts. It is done through massive mobilization and organization and, on a few key policy points, running well-designed and well-targeted ads (Obama has the luxury of not having to target at all - he’s doing the sledgehammer method, running ads on every channel I watch, every sporting event, every comedy show, even late night cartoons). I was stunned at the number of mobilizers, organizers, and longtime volunteers who were sitting this McCain ride out completely before the Palin pick (which energized the volunteer base like nothing else - her rallies are easily twice the size of his). And this isn’t just true in Virginia. But those are the stories for the morning after.

This morning, this showed up in my inbox. I walk to this park every week, sometimes twice. And on Wednesday, Barack will be coming to town.

This Wednesday, October 22nd, please join Barack Obama in Leesburg, where he will talk about his vision for creating the kind of change we need.

Change We Need Rally
with Barack Obama

Ida Lee Park
Festival Field
50 Ida Lee Drive, NW
Leesburg, VA

Wednesday, October 22nd
Gates open: 3:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 5:30 p.m.

RSVP

http://va.barackobama.com/LeesburgChange

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required; however, an RSVP is strongly encouraged. Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For security reasons, do not bring bags and please limit personal items. No signs or banners permitted.

Obama’s about to head to Hawaii to see his ailing grandmother - poor gal, the one he called a “typical white person” - but a rally in Leesburg, VA, a place that elects a solidly moderate GOPer in Representative Frank Wolf like clockwork every two years, is more important.

The Lesson: The Media is a fickle creature. Grudging respect is not a basis for a successful electoral campaign. And running Old and Busted against the New Hotness is a whole mess of Fail.

Here’s my latest Washington Times oped, on Joe Wurzelbacher’s questioning of Obama, and how it shows McCain’s limits. The closer:

“The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not reason,” G.K. Chesterton mused a century ago. “The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it.” America’s electoral choice in 2008 is no longer based on reason, on the whys and wherefores of established fact, or on the citizen — the plumber — expressing his view. It is based on the new unshakeables of feeling and sentiment, on a state of mind expressed eloquently in Mr. Obama’s surprisingly honest slogan — no, not the ever-present affirmation of “Yes we can,” but the bastardized Latin of his hubristic presidential seal: “Vero Possumus.” Literally translated, it is an exclamation with all the balance and reason of a toddler stamping his feet: “I do it!”

And soon enough, barring a thousand more Joe the Plumbers brave enough to withstand the assault, he will.

Read it all here.

My latest op-ed over at the Washington Times concerns the dueling perspectives of John McCain and Barack Obama on our economic woes - and how both fail the test:

So, here’s a story to tell the grandkids around some future autumn kitchen table. Once upon a time, the American people, facing the greatest global economic crisis in a generation, headed to the polls to choose the next leader of the free world and custodian of the formerly free market. Their options were limited to the dashing young lawyer and the battle-tested combat pilot, two men who for all their appeal had never run a state, a town or a business - large or small.

It’s shocking to consider how Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama come to the challenges of the day with such little economic knowledge of their own. If both won their respective primaries thanks in the largest part to their positions on security issues - Mr. McCain elevated by his undeniable vindication on the Iraq troop surge, Mr. Obama fueled by a vibrant antiwar upsurge that now seems like little more than postwar bitterness and should change little about the outcome of the conflict - neither comes to the fray knowing more about the economy than what others tell them. And for advice, one has the banking lobby whispering in his ear while the other has the corrupt handmaidens of Fannie and Freddie holding his purse strings.

Read it all over at the WT website.

I watched very little of it, but I think Ezra Klein’s assessment sums up the opinions of the blogosphere rather tidily:

This is a pretty traditional debate performance for Obama. Strong on substance. Few mistakes. Little in the way of killer instinct or decapitating lines. McCain, by contrast, is offering an uncommonly strong performance powered, as far as I can tell, by his raging contempt for Obama. He won’t look at him. He’s using “what Senator Obama doesn’t understand” the way Joe Biden uses “ladies and gentlemen.” His constant refrain is the places he’s visited, leaders he’s befriended, aging advisers and presidents he’s known. Obama is conveying the fact that he thinks McCain wrong. But McCain is conveying the fact that he thinks Obama an unprepared lightweight. One of these is a stronger claim than the other.

Obama is without question the more appealing fellow on a stage: he has a commanding presence, an engaging smile, a great voice for the thing. He makes things seem more substantive just by talking about them (where the same lines repeated by, say, John Kerry would seem limp and trite). He’s also fantastic when it comes to changing the subject - he can easily glide from a tough topical question to a series of vague and nice sounding policies (hence Lehrer’s frustration at points tonight). But he also has the smart professor’s disease of talking long and being a poor self-editor, thinking that using a string of numbers is an argument, and generally sounding like he loves the way he talks. This makes him ideal for a campus debate, or excellent in a venue where his opponent is restrained (see: Clinton, Hillary), but poor in a situation where the other debater comes to the forum carrying a lead pipe in his craggy old hands.

McCain is used to the dueling of the Senate floor - he’s a poor speaker generally, not an inspirational vocalist, and a reader and a narrator as opposed to an elucidator of things. Where Obama can make any muddle seem appealing, McCain is oftentimes forced to either skip the muddle or get bogged down in it and lose the audience. McCain won very few of the debates during the GOP primary, and when he did win, he often seemed like a mean old man berating students for being idiots. But he does have his moments, and when he gets a good clip going, McCain ceases to seem mean, and instead comes across as a supporting character in a David Mamet screenplay, smiling jubilantly as he brings that pipe down.

In this situation, with this opponent in the arena, McCain seems rejuvenated. Where Obama is young and smart, McCain is old and forceful. Even his smile is wartorn and uneven next to Obama’s gleam and Denzel Washington-like symmetry, but the unevenness gives him a certain grace. McCain is the known quantity on stage, and he has nothing to prove; most of Obama’s slights about him being Bush 3.0 just don’t sell, because his brand is so well-defined already. This gives him a slight advantage, as Klein notes - Obama has to come to these debates to close the deal, to sell himself as the next President, to convince the last waverers not to jump over to the other side in a time of uncertainty. McCain, on the other hand, just needs to convince people that Obama is unready to lead, a gamble in a dangerous time, a guy who’s better suited for the celebrity circuit than the Oval Office.

There’s something oddly amusing about these seeing these two very odd characters go at it. Neither of them really know anything about the biggest issue in this election, the economy - one’s a soldier, one’s a lawyer. McCain is the more emotional of the two, more inclined to act on gut instinct and passion, while under Obama’s soft exterior is a more calculating and capable politician. Four years ago, one never would’ve predicted that either of these men would end up on this stage.

Now we’re stuck with them, and there’s nothing else for it. So let’s hope they’ll still take paper money for popcorn at the next one.

“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – [my campaign has] a budget of about three times that just for the month.”

“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it.”

A week ago, from far and wide, the followers came to the mountaintop to glimpse Barack Obama in his moment of glory. And the New Adonis did not disappoint.

The event was an act of soaring political grandeur, inspiring the devoted flock to call out in hallelujahs. Yet in the speech itself, try and find it you may, but there was no phrase particularly memorable, no quotable line.

Do not hold that against his speech. It is not what Obama said that mattered.

The lasting image of Obama’s speech will be the spectacle itself: a Super Bowl halftime show without a game score to go with it (unless it is New Democrats 0, Neo-Old Democrats 1). No one is prompted to such an equivalent force of emotion, the tears of joy, at the idea of President McCain. At least, no sane person. But sanity itself is an act of rebellion in a civic universe where the political pageantry surrounding a man who has accomplished such meager political crumbs and done so little in life is enough – more than enough – to carry a candidacy based on the unassailable purity and goodness and untapped power of that one man all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania.

What Sarah Palin came the Twin Cities to say tonight mattered. It mattered because it proved she was not merely chosen for her gender, for her looks, for her style, or for the historic mark she represents for the Republican Party. She was chosen because of her beliefs - because she’s taken on the hordes of corrupt bureaucrats and pork swilling politicians, even those in her own party, to achieve what she believes is right. It’s because on the most crucial test for any politician - will you stand up, despite all the forces arrayed against you, for what you believe to be right? - Sarah Palin passed, and Barack Obama has that nagging Incomplete.

When has Barack Obama taken an arrow from his own party for anything he believed in? When has he decided that he would act, with bravery and courage, staking out a tough decision that he believed to be right, against the wishes of the old political masters of his party? When has he broken with the leftist base, who today screams with all their might that this woman is not fit to lead even as she governs a state budget and an employee base that dwarfs anything Obama has run, that her family is fair game because she is vile, that her place is the home and not the campaign trail, and cannot possibly be a mother and a political leader?

Obama has no lack of a certain kind of courage – give him that. It takes bravado of a sort to declare that you deserve the credit for so many things in the state senate, in a biopic video so short that it cannot find space to mention Columbia or Harvard Law, where you had no hand in the legislation, and most often voted “present.” It is courage of a sort to take a file photo of yourself standing alongside Dick Lugar as an indication that you, through sheer force of will and over the objections of the warmongering right, ended the expansion of nuclear weapons. It is a form of boldness, yes, to declare in one instant that John McCain is a man to be respected and honored, and in the next contend that this man – who defended the Democratic nominee in 2004 against all attacks, even accurate ones – has committed a grave insult against all in the arena by declaring, old war hero that he is, that he will put his country first.

That man in the arena presented himself the kind of savior America needs, after all of his promises, declaring his ascendant “humility.” He read the word off the teleprompter carefully, as if using his mouth in a way it was not used to. Humility. Yes, the humility that promises on the one hand to create massive corporate loopholes to encourage artificially-created jobs, then on the other to pay for them by closing massive corporate loopholes. The humility that swears in the one instant to lessen costs, and in the next to require vast sums of money from corporations to a degree that would drive any sane organization from our shores. The humility that promises to cut taxes, even for people who do not pay taxes, and pay for them by going line by line through the federal budget and cutting out the treasured programs managed and cared for by Democrats in the bureaucracy since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and defended by their allies in the Congress, with but the stroke of a pen.

And this is the man - humble, humble Barack, who has never cut one program, who has never shrunk one agency, who has never fired one bureaucrat - who says that Sarah Palin is too raw and naive.

One wonders which reporter will be brave enough to ask which major program he will cut first. He had, before people started paying attention to his campaign, mentioned NASA as a possible plum target – creating a sucking sound of irony, considering the prominent placement of the returning astronauts in his campaign video…but such needling questions are for after an election, not before.

Barack Obama came to Denver to give a Democrat speech. It may eventually be remembered as the apotheosis of a conventional Democrat speech: the images taken from places he did not live, jobs he did not work, wars he did not fight in, to connect with the broadest possible audience of people. It could have been given, nearly all of it, by John Edwards, man of the milltown – before he ceased to exist – or by Hillary Clinton, the original blue collar warrior from Chicago. It was a speech for Democrats, and delivered to Democrats – and hence the lack of the true outline that makes for powerful remarks. Like the State of the Union speeches given by the eloquent yet fickle President Clinton, it is assumed that this laundry list, a litany of campaign promises that merge together into a mushy feeling of warmth and contentment, would be met with glorious clamor, as if proceeding from the mouth of a god. And they were.

Sarah Palin did not come to speak as a god. Her words proceed not from the bowels of Olympus, but the heart of the enduring American spirit - the driving force that calls out from the rough frontier for young men and women to go West, and ever West. It asserts the worth of the seekers, the pioneers, and all those who are ever unsatisfied with the limits of the status quo - that things are as they ever will be, and you should accept it, and move on. She speaks to those who heed the call to carve out a spot of land and make it your own, to build a good home, to raise a good family, and to be ready, should they ever call for you, to defend the freedoms that made all this possible - to defend them with your all. This is an ordinary action - but in the course of doing it, it can become extraordinary.

What Sarah Palin said tonight matters. She asks you not to vote for her because of what she claims to be, but because of what she is - because of the principles that undergird her, that motivate her, that made her challenge the old guard in her own party and the bureaucrats in others - and now, to take on the self-proclaimed Arbiter of Change. What she said tonight shows that underneath her pleasant exterior and her mother’s smile is a sharp, talented executive - one who knows how to throw a punch, and how to make change a reality, not a promise. She is tough - she is a fighter - and she is not about to blink.

“Yes, I am a woman,” she says. “And I am ready.”

It was not what Obama said that mattered. Those were words – just words. He shined in his moment of beauty, his message delivered with the Chestertonian clarity of the absurd.

“No, I am not a man,” his speech declared, “I am a cause.”

And so, as the man has declared it, he is.

originally posted at redstate

This is, as the alcoholics refer to it, a moment of clarity. From now on, Barack Obama’s Democrats cannot complain when we refer to them as “pro-abortion.”

Even as Barack Obama claims to welcome a position of moderation on the difficult moral question of abortion, the Democratic Party has moved today under his leadership to fully embrace the Culture of Death. The newly announced Democratic Platform has tossed the old language of “safe, legal, and rare” over the side, finally rejecting the idea that abortion is a social ill.

No longer do Democrats ask that “women not have abortions unless they absolutely must.” They are reclaiming the moral imperative for the goodness of destruction. And they will not be ashamed to demand what is rightfully theirs.

For years, the merchants of abortion have struggled with the dichotomy of their political circumstance. While triumphant at the Supreme Court level, the pro-abortion movement has had difficulty convincing enough people that being “pro-abortion” is not a bad thing…in fact, many of them argue, that it has social benefits, decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies, decreasing poverty, and perhaps, as the Freakonomics folks argued, decreasing crime.

Slate’s Will Saletan – himself a pro-choice author who argues in his book Bearing Right that conservatives have “won” the abortion wars by establishing in the minds of the public that 1) abortion is a social ill that should be avoided, and 2) no government or taxpayer funds should therefore go to support it – has confronted this split personality on more than one occasion:

Friday morning, leaders of pro-choice and feminist groups gathered at the Center for American Progress to debate the movement’s future. One of the panelists reported that the latest annual tally of abortions in this country was 1.295 million. The most recent comparative numbers, detailed in an article I brought to the meeting, indicated that our abortion rate exceeds that of every Western European nation. “Raise your hand if you think that number is too high,” the conference moderator told the 50 people in the room.I saw one hand go up. The woman next to me said she saw another. The two hand-raisers used to work for pro-choice groups but no longer do.

These leaders of the pro-abortion movement cannot accept, as most of America and Saletan do, that the act of abortion be considered “bad” – a necessary evil, in other words. They recoil when he uses the word, and react as strongly to the idea of “responsibility.”

I knew I’d get flak for using the word “bad.” But I was amazed at the group’s reaction to the word “responsibility,” which was the subject of the next panel. “Responsibility is to me a code word that has a lot of racial and class … implications,” said one participant. “I don’t like the word ‘responsibility,’ ” said another. “I don’t want to talk about responsibility unless we’re talking about the government taking responsibility,” said a third. Hoping to bring the discussion back to earth, the moderator suggested, “Is there a way for us to reclaim the idea of responsibility?” The answer was a chorus of rejection, punctuated by a “No way!” She retreated apologetically.

The new Democratic Platform is a firm reclaiming of the idea that abortion cannot be “bad,” that it never is anything but good and right and responsible. And in taking this step, Barack Obama’s Democrats have embraced an idea not just at odds with everything we know to be morally right, but at odds with what the rising generation of Americans believe to be morally right.

The Wall Street Journal headline on May 4, 2006 read: “Support for Roe v. Wade Hits New Low, Poll Shows.” The article details the latest findings with medical detachment:

“U.S. support for Roe v. Wade is at its lowest level in decades, according to a new Harris poll…The latest telephone survey of 1,016 adults indicates Roe v. Wade is supported by a slim 49% to 47% plurality, compared with 52% who favored the decision in 2005 and 57% in 1998…40% of those polled favor laws that would make it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while another 40% say no change should be made to existing abortion laws, and 15% favor laws that would make it easier to get an abortion.”

According to Harris, the percentage of Americans who support abortion on demand—that is, the current law, which gives the right to obtain an abortion under any circumstance—has remained at a steady 24% for the past decade. That is the plateau of support that the abortion defenders turn to – and it is likely to be the only portion that will support the idea that abortion is a moral good.

The key to this growing sentiment against abortion on demand is the changing attitudes of young people, who view abortion not as a right to defend, but as a nagging socially disturbing activity, a relic of the days before the pill. In 2003, a poll by CBS News and the New York Times found that Americans between 18 and 29 had drastically decreased their support for the general availability of abortion from the respondents a decade earlier—a margin that fell from 48% to 39%. And a UCLA study of college freshman at 437 universities found a similar dropoff—54% of the teenagers supported legalized abortion, versus 67% in 1993.

In April of 2007, the Polling Company released a comprehensive survey which found that, given a set of six different options—“abortion should be illegal, illegal with an exception for the life of the mother, illegal with that exception and an exception for rape and incest, legal for any reason in the first trimester, legal for any reason in the first and second trimester, and legal for any reason throughout pregnancy”—a full 54 percent choose the three generally pro-life options, and 41 percent the three pro-choice ones. A mere 12 percent supported the current legal status, the most extreme position. The results are not surprising—in fact, they are virtually identical to those of a Wirthlin poll from November 2004. But there was something more: Young adults (18-34), and especially young women, were more likely than any of the other demographic groups to choose the pro-life options.

Even Hollywood is getting into the new anti-abortion rhythm – films like Juno and Knocked Up reject the decision for abortion – not ought of a deeply held moral sentiment, but out of the basic, ingrained belief that the decision for death is wrong. We’ve come a long way from Fast Times at Ridgmont High. These movies aren’t pro-life because of faith – they’re pro-life because being pro-death is so 1973.

Taken together, the trend is a shocking one – or, as the Times described it in their 2003 headline: “Surprise, Mom – I’m Anti-Abortion.”

In 2004, Liza Mundy described the difficulty of responding to a Newsweek article on new pregnancy technology, acknowledging that “[a]n atmosphere in which pregnant women happily scrapbook those early ultrasounds—have created a real image problem for the pro-choice movement.”

As Kirsten Moore, the president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, told Mundy: the piece “kind of prompted us to realize, oh my God, our movement’s messages suck.”

The response:

“Consultants were called in, who urged abortion rights groups to ‘reframe the debate’ and ‘take back’ words like ‘baby’ and ‘mother.’”

But paid consultants can do little to change the out-of-touch nature of the pro-choice movement, and “reclaiming” words is very difficult when there was never any real ownership of them. Through foolishness, abrasive tactics, and a message that is increasingly weakened by the expansion of scientific knowledge, the abortion marketers are losing the next generation of American voters.

Essentially, a plurality of Americans now hold the Bob Dole position – that abortion in the case of rape, incest, deformity, or risks to the life of the mother ought to be protected, and that abortion rights as they currently stand are far too liberal. This is a position that is borne out by the polling data, which Ramesh Ponnuru describes here:

Twice in three days—in Slate and the New York Times —I have run across the claim that 75 percent of the public favors legal abortion. That seems incredibly high. The source for the Times claim, and the apparent source for Slate too, is a CBS/NYT poll that is currently at the top of the Polling Report’s abortion page. The question asked is whether abortion should be “generally available,” “available. . . under stricter limits,” or “not permitted.” The latest results: 39, 37, and 21. You can spin that to mean that 76 percent of the public thinks that abortion should be “available,” or that 58 percent of the public wants “stricter limits.” Or you can conclude that the poll is not terribly well designed.

More on the numbers here. The only way the abortion proponents can achieve a lasting political majority is by embracing the “safe, legal, and rare” triumvirate – by convincing enough people in that 37 percentile who believe abortion to be nasty but necessary in cases of rape and incest to go along with the idea that it ought to be an unlimited legal right. They have done this for most of the past two decades.

Now, Barack Obama’s Democrats are rejecting this idea and embracing the zealotry of their most pro-abortion constituency. They affirm the goodness, the rightness of their destruction. They insist: “We deserve to kill our babies without being ashamed – you will not just tolerate our decision as legally protected; you will accept it as morally right.”

Of note is the cast of characters who influenced this decision, which includes one Doug Kmiec.

The Brody File is told that people like Pastor Joel Hunter, (registered Republican) Jim Wallis, (President of Sojourners) Pastor Tony Campolo and conservative Catholic legal scholar Doug Kmiec all helped in the drafting of this new language. The Obama campaign has obviously been involved quite a bit too.

It’s a fitting cast, of course. Last night, in an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, former Reagan appointee Prof. Kmiec reiterated his belief that Obama is a candidate who will emulate the Gipper (?) in reaching out to all political sides on the issues, and finding “common ground” with those who do not share his views.

Kmiec, the most prominent of the apparently mythical Obamacons, has infamously argued that Obama is secretly open to the pro-life viewpoint, that he is a moderate on the issue – even as outlets like the New Republic advance the bizarre theory that John McCain is a “pro-life zealot.” Of course, when Doug Kmiec speaks to Barack Obama about abortion and finds common ground, it appears that Obama primarily leans on the common ground that both of the people in the conversation adore him.

Indeed, it has become clear in recent weeks that it was Obama who lied repeatedly about the most important votes he’s ever made on the abortion issue, votes that put him in the most extreme camp of all: favoring the abandonment and death of born victims who survive the horrors of abortion and emerge from the womb alive.

Obama’s cover story had been that the bill did not include protections to prevent the anti-infanticide measure, targeted at an Illinois hospital (named, in one of those little ironies which make your heart break, Christ Hospital) which was repeatedly engaging in the activity, from affecting legally protected abortions. But in fact, the bill DID include this protection. Obama voted for them, and they were added to the measure by a unanimous vote in committee, mere minutes before he voted against passage and killed the bill to defend the young, helpless survivors of their mother’s attempts at destruction.

Documents obtained by NRLC now demonstrate conclusively that Obama’s entire defense is based on a brazen factual misrepresentation.The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the “neutrality clause” (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.

…In the record of the vote taking on March 12, 2003, the amendment was adopted unanimously by Chairman Obama’s HHS subcommittee. That added the neutrality clause to the bill — which then went down to defeat on a party-line 6-4 vote, with Obama voting against protecting infants born alive during abortions.

They have a Comfort Room in Christ Hospital, where you can say your goodbyes to all those inconvenient lives. I’ve stood in a Comfort Room like it before - other hospitals have them as well. One wonders if, now that abortion is declared by The One’s Own Disciples as a social good, there will be any need for such a room. The whole of society will supply it, instead.

There is no sound in the Comfort Room. It is a deafening sort of quiet. It is sterile. There is a scent of chemicals. Time hangs suspended. There is no glimpse, however brief, of the world as it might have been – no, there are no small footsteps in the hall – if all the broken, fragile lives snuffed out in this room of quiet death had lived to see the sun.

It is a room of nothingness, filled with the silence of the life not lived, and whispers of the breath not taken.

Barack Obama’s Democrats will no longer be silent about their mission to make America one vast Comfort Room. Abortion is a moral good that you must respect. And they will not be ashamed to demand what is rightfully theirs.

crossposted from redstate.