Painting the Map Red

Picked up Hugh Hewitt's new book up in the twin cities Thursday and finished it up in pretty short order. It was a must read for anyone that considers themselves anything less than a far lefty. It would bee good for them to read it as well, but folks on the far left can't possibly read anything that disagrees with them, or there is no way they would stay there.

He kicks off with; "It's break the glass and pull the alarm time" for the republican party. Bush isn't ever going to be more than a 50/50 President no matter how good he does, and it is time for Republicans to realize that they need overarching goals. A 60 seat majority in the Senate is the big goal what Hugh says needs to be focused on. He believes that Republicans can easily stay the majority party and potentially even do in the Democrat party so they needed to form a new party. Indeed, he would say that Republicans BETTER figure out how to do this for the future of western civilization.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) isn't going to go away anytime soon, and if it isn't well fought (and maybe even if it is), there is going to be a 9-11 with WMD at some point that is going to radically change life going forward. The best way to keep that from happening is to keep Republicans in control, but that isn't going to be easy ... Because of the standard reasons; MSM, the rich guys like Soros and the Hollywood types, but maybe mostly because the nature of Republicans. Pretty easily disenchanted and perfectionistic ideologues that love nothing better than leaving the tent on "principal" even if the tent collapses because of it. I was there with Bush Sr and his breaking of "No New Taxes" ... so I did my part to usher in Bill Clinton, Monica, Internet bubbles, and the security conditions that created 9-11.

For Republicans to be a majority party, they have to be a very big tent, but it has to be tent ... he argues that Olympia Snow, John McCain, and Arlen Specter all make it in that tent ... Lincoln Chafee does not and needs to be defeated, even at the cost of Republicans voting for a Democrat. The seasoned political logic of the hows and whys of that alone are worth the price of admission. Hugh is a solid pragmatist, something that can never have to much exposure to Republicans.

He is convinced that the Democrat Presidential ticket in '08 is going to be Hillary/ Obama, and it is going to be VERY hard to beat. He doesn't think the Democrats have a great chance of taking either house this year, but it could come very close unless Republicans have a solid national goal, which he argues ought to be a 60 seat Senate. His main messages are all on the "going negative on the Democrats", arguing they are certainly doing, have and will be doing that with the help of the MSM, and they have given the Republicans better negatives to go after them with:

1). The Democrat left and the MSM have declared ware on the military
2). The Democrat left has declared war on religion
3). The Democrats have declared war on the Judiciary
4). The Democrats want to radically re-define marriage on the way to radically redefining the culture.
5). The Democrats are addicted to venom, and that venom is destroying the political process ... and people would like to see it stopped, which mostly means stopping Democrats.

He makes and interesting argument that the technology of the internet has made it impossible for the MSM to continue to put lipstick on the pig of the hard lefts screaming, bile, and "chip on the shoulder" attitude, where it has allowed thousands of generally reasonable, Christian, family oriented right-center blogs to spring up and be read. While the left blogs are loaded with "Hitler", the F word, and rambling rants against everything from Christians to the military to America itself, the right-center blogs that predominate tend to be just the opposite. Just like "guns don't kill people, people do", the internet is just a tool, it allows more direct contact with fewer filters. In general, for the center-right that has provided a picture that is much more flattering than the one usually painted by the MSM, where the left has exposed itself in all it's screeching, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family and generally "anti" picture, and that picture has been far from flattering.