The ‘conservatives’ are out to get the President now. Not all of them, to be sure, but enough of them to be worrying. What are they upset about? Broadly, there’s upset about increased Federal spending, the proposed immigration reforms, and a subset of other, decidedly secondary, issues (gay marriage, the PATRIOT Act, etc.). Why are they dangerous? They’re dangerous for the same reason that domestic fifth columnists who have sought to undermine the War on Terror are dangerous: they’re supposed to be on our side, and it’s damn hard to fight a battle with a thousand people seeking to emulate Assan Akhbar hidden in your camp.

Far too many people today are unwilling to make the compromises necessary to get by in political life. There’s a dangerous tendency among conservatives to demand the absolute victory, when such a victory is impossible, and to refuse smaller victories, even when they are. In three years in office, President Bush has waged two successful wars, cut taxes twice, outlawed Partial Birth Abortion, killed the Kyoto Treaty, discarded the ABM treaty, ended the possibility of US participation in the International Criminal Court, forced Libya to surrender it’s WMD programs without firing a shot, conducted the largest government reorganization in fifty years by creating the Department of Homeland Security, announced plans for a Moon base and trip to Mars, begun construction of an anti-ballistic missile shield, captured Saddam Hussein, killed or captured two-thirds of the senior leadership of al-Qaeda, and done countless other smaller things which would take pages to list.

Has he done everything that a conservative would want? No, of course he hasn’t. Could he have done everything that conservatives are now demanding? No, he couldn’t have. Come the winter of 2008-2009 (God willing) pundits won’t be talking about how President Bush is “searching for a legacy”, they’ll be debating which of his many legacies is most important.

Now, I admit, that I too am concerned about Federal spending. But let’s get serious: what would you have the President do? A President can only do so many things at one time and if he decided to really fight Congress over the budget, as Clinton often did, there would be little room for him to do much more than fight over the budget. Which would you rather have: a slightly lower rate of increase in discretionary spending, or the liberation of Iraq? Because, fundamentally, that’s the choice that you’d be making. During the Second World War, FDR allowed many of his previous New Deal programs to be cut or eliminated (including the Civilian Conservation Corps) in order to gain enough political support to wage the war effectively. In this war, President Bush has clearly made the decision to (temporarily) let Republican mania for budget-cutting fall by the wayside in order to keep together a working coalition with which to wage the war. This is the sort of responsible decision that a statesman has to make from time to time, as painful as it might be.

As for the adding of the prescription drug benefit to Medicare: that’s something that was going to be done either way. The fashion in which the Republicans passed it does, eventually, set the way for future privatization.

Let’s face it: the American people aren’t going to lose their addiction to universal entitlements without some very careful manoeuvring. Frankly, I’m all for junking Social Security and Medicare- but these are things that cannot be done outright. In fact, the only way I can think of to break these programs is to gradually and deliberately sabotage them.

The way to reduce public support for Medicare and Social Security is to reduce the number of people who benefit from them. The way to do this is two-fold. First, higher income will be removed from the rolls by means testing which, of course, will be supported by the population as a whole, who are usually eager for a way to soak the rich. As the opposite end, various programs should be developed (most likely private retirement and medical accounts) which will encourage the young to opt out of the public system. Eventually, people not drawing (and not planning to draw) from these programs will become a majority of the population and these programs will cease to be thought of as entitlements and come to be seen as welfare programs. Thereafter, we will be able to attack and destroy them as though they were conventional welfare state nonsense.

But that’s all in the future. For the time being we must face the reality that a prescription drug benefit was going to be passed either way- by one party or the other. Better, I think, to get our version (and the political credit) than to let them have theirs. By passing this, President Bush has done the same thing that President Clinton did when he signed a Welfare Reform bill before the 1996 election: he robbed the other party of a key domestic issue.

The conservative rage over the immigration thing is similarly silly. What exactly would they have the President do? A program of deportations, a la the 1950’s era Operation Wetback (sorry, but that was the real name) would be deluged in negative media coverage of the worst sort. We’d get hundreds of emotional, heart-wrenching, stories about poor ‘undocumented workers’ who simply “wanted to have a better life for themselves and their families”, etc. Oh, yes: and we’d end up with Hispanics voting Democrat by the same percentage as blacks do today and that’s about the last thing we need.

Another stupid criticism of the President revolves around the myth that the Chief Executive somehow has the power to prevent companies from moving jobs overseas. Frankly, short of nationalizing the companies, I don’t really see what exactly anyone expects the President to do. Seeking to artificially maintain an 20th century industrial economy in the face of the information revolution is every bit as silly as trying to maintain, as some did, an agricultural society in the face of the Industrial Revolution.

Of course some jobs are going overseas. But let’s keep things in perspective: the unemployment rate is that below 6%, which used to be the lowest level of unemployment that economists thought was possible without triggering inflation. We’re undergoing economic change here. Now, that isn’t always pretty or fun: but it’s a reality that everyone has to live with. My Grandfather was a commercial fisherman. Had we followed the paths of some families, my father could have then become one, and then I could have become one, and I could be sitting here right now whining about the lack of work for fisherman. But my father didn’t become one because he clearly saw that the future in that industry was less then bright.

I hear a lot from men in their mid-thirties who complain of lost manufacturing jobs, and from men in their mid-twenties who used to be computer programmers. This is what I have to say to them: I’m sorry, but your jobs aren’t going to be coming back- ever- and no one can make them come back, no matter what they say. At best, we might be able to bring your jobs back for a year or two by instituting onerous tariffs, but the golden age trigged by these developments would be swiftly interrupted by the Global Depression triggered by the same cause. If you’re going to vote for a Democrat because you think that George W. Bush is responsible for your being laid off- you’re not only a traitor and supporter of al-Qaeda, but stupid as well.

The Democrats don’t have a plan to bring your job back, or anyone else’s for that matter. The only jobs that the Democrats will create are jobs for liberal academics who will suddenly find themselves appointed as the Undersecretary of State for Adulterous Affairs and ‘sex educators’ who will be recruited as part of a massive government effort to teach the ins-and-outs of buggery to Kindergarteners.

The Democratic jobs plan is a lot like their plan for fighting terrorism: they’re going to talk about it a lot. I can’t think of a single major Democrat who has a plan for creating jobs that extends beyond the level of the need to talk about creating more jobs. The dearly-departed Richard Gephardt (who was suddenly hailed as a statesman, when his failure in the Iowa Caucuses signalled the fact that we’d probably never have to look upon his waxy, Zombie-like face ever again) claimed that zero unemployment is possible and desirable. He didn’t elaborate on that statement, though I’d have liked him to. I know of exactly one system of organization that makes zero unemployment possible and (to the best of my recollection) that peculiar institution is rather explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment.

As for the gay marriage issue: there are far, far, far more votes (especially for a Republican) in opposition to homosexuality than there are in support of it. Let’s face it: homosexuality isn’t going to be outlawed any time soon. It would be much better (from the perspective of homosexuals) for them to be represented within the Republican coalition than outside of it, for this very reason.

So long as the Log Cabin Republicans and people like Andrew Sullivan remain faithful and loyal supporters, there is every reason to listen to and respect their views. But, if they wish to oppose the President, then they can go straight to Hell, so far as I’m concerned.

Freed of the need to cater to the homosexual minority in the Republican Party, we shall be free to truly demagogue on the issue and use it to divide and destroy the Democratic Party as well as to purge coward moderates and liberals from the Republican Party. Running a full-throated campaign against gay marriage, with a general overtone of disapproval towards homosexuality, will bring a chorus of approval from a large part of the nation. In the areas where it will bring a real backlash, well, we weren’t going to win there anyways. Once we’ve got control of the Federal Government, we can punish those areas (and their politicians) by systematically stripping them of every single dollar in Federal money.

That’s what many of these opponents fail to recognize and understand: we’re playing for big stakes here. The little wins that we are accumulating are all in the service of the ultimate goals to which many of them profess to be devoted.

By increasing the Republican base and working to bring about the final destruction of the Democratic Party, we are doing the Lord’s work of bringing about a real victory for the right in America. We will convince people to hand us power, and then we shall make a truly effectual use of that power.

In the interim, it’s long past time for all conservatives and Republicans to shut up and unite behind the President.