Iowa’s Democrats blew up the Presidential race tonight. Forget everything that you thought you know, forget everything that the media said, this is now, as General MacArthur said after the Chinese intervened in Korea, an entirely different war. Contrary to months of assurances, Dean did not have Iowa wrapped up. The Deaniac legions which invaded Iowa have been crushed as thoroughly as those that the Romans marched into Teutoburg Forest. I would not be at all surprised if the post-midnight hours find a drunken Governor Dr. Howard Brush Dean III raging against Varus.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Dean is done. Not yet, at least. He’s got far too much money for that. At this point it is possible that Clark, Dean, Edwards, or Kerry could win the nomination. Within a few days, polls in New Hampshire (which already showed Kerry clawing his way into second place) will probably show the French-looking Senator in the lead. Edwards will probably hit about fifteen to twenty percent, Clark a little under twenty, and Dean about twenty-five. I suspect Dean might well pull out a victory in New Hampshire because he has the money. Look for him to pour it into the state: after all, he raised it to spend it.

Anyone who tells you that they can see what will happen next is a liar. This campaign is going to be chaotic and confused through, at the very least, New Hampshire. Tonight knocked Dick Gephardt out. Now, in the next few weeks, we have two more ‘must win’ primaries for other candidates. In order to win the nomination, I think, Howard Dean must win in New Hampshire and John Edwards must win in South Carolina. Wesley Clark and John Kerry will be alright so long as the perform within expectations. A Dean who fails to win in New Hampshire is finished, even if he is unwilling to initially admit it.

The one lie we’re going to hear a lot in the next few days is this, “afraid of choosing someone who was seen as unelectable (Dean) Iowa Democrats opted for electable moderates.” Those of us who care about America need to begin fighting this lie right away. I’d bet good money that a majority of Americans will have never even heard of John Kerry or John Edwards before tonight. The next little while will heavily help to shape how the public thinks of them. If John Kerry gets branded as a “heroic Vietnam veteran” and John Edwards gets branded as a “Grisham-esque crusading lawyer” we’re going to have a much harder time of things than if John Kerry gets branded as a “ultra-liberal from Massachusetts who enjoys marrying for money” and John Edwards gets branded as an “ambulance-chasing shyster”. Real patriots need to start smearing these left-wing douchebags before the media gets a chance to begin playing up their “good” qualities.

Of the four still-viable candidates, who would we most like to run against? How will we fight them?

John F. Kerry, of course, is an individual with treasonous tendencies and a voting record roughly equivalent to that of Ted Kennedy. Yes, I’m aware that Senator Kerry is a Vietnam veteran with a distinguished combat record. That doesn’t change the facts of what came afterwards. John Kerry may have fought well in Vietnam but, the moment he got home, he dedicated himself to fighting equally hard against his former comrades. He was the founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, one of the leading disloyal groups of that day. He was a leader of the ultimately successful efforts to dishonor the sacrifice made by America in Vietnam and to rob the South Vietnamese people of their freedom. Never forget that. He might have served in combat, but so did Benedict Arnold. The primary difference between the two, based upon Kerry’s history of opportunism, is that the North Vietnamese lacked the capacity to satisfy Kerry’s ambitions with offers of a General’s commission and titles.

We must never forget this. 55,000 Americans died in the defense of freedom and John Kerry helped lead the effort to betray them and render that sacrifice worthless. And why did he do this? Simply to satisfy his own ambitions.

In fact, Kerry actually left the Navy early to run for Congress on an extreme left-wing platform that included a plan to, “eliminate CIA activity” and ensure that American troops are only, “dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.” He proceeded to marry well, marrying a very rich woman. Eventually he divorced her and married a very, very, very rich (and older) woman. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Kerry is something of a male gold-digger.

He’s always had his eye on the prize. When he graduated from Yale he delivered a speech in which he attacked US foreign policy. When he sought to run for Congress a second time, in 1972, he lived in three different districts in two months, looking for somewhere he could win (he lost). Eventually he ended up getting himself elected as Michael Dukakis’ Lieutenant Governor and then to the US Senate, where he consistently aligned himself with the gathering shadows of treason and subversion. He was against the first Gulf War, he was for a nuclear freeze, and remains opposed to all restrictions whatsoever on abortion. He’s a man who, despite his recent claims to the contrary, has never seen a tax he wouldn’t like to raise. He’s also opposed to the death penalty and was a supporter of the infamous Massachusetts furlough program which let Willie Horton out of jail to brutally rape a woman.

The Breck girl, Senator John Edwards (Handsome-North Carolina), on the other hand, is hard to criticize for anything he’s done in public life, because he’s done nothing in public life except shill for his fellow ambulance-chasers and lay the groundwork for a Presidential run. Entrance polls from Iowa showed that he held a strong lead among women. This, insofar as I can tell, is due more to his looks than to any other factor. Frankly, this is the main danger in letting women vote. It would be a danger for men as well, were it not generally the case that more female politicians look like Bea Arthur than Britney Spears.

Edwards is the dangerous one, I think, if we let the media give him a nice write up. We cannot ever let anyone forget that he’s a parasite, a scumbag lawyer who made his money chasing after personal injuries. At heart, he’s no different than all of those lawyers who advertise on TV at 2AM promising to get you a better settlement out of that car crash.

We can, if we attack with sufficient audacity, turn Edwards’ image against him. He’s all style and no substance. Beneath everything, he’s a far-left liberal. Pro-abortion, pro-gay, and everything else that goes with it. Edwards will be harder to run against for the simple reason that, unlike many of the other candidates, he’s not obviously insane. A campaign against Edwards will be tough, and probably have to be fought on the issues. Luckily for us, Edwards remains a dark horse.

Wesley Clark, the third viable candidate, will probably fight Edwards for the nomination all across the South. Clark has more money than Edwards, a stronger base of support, and more endorsements. If Edwards cannot follow up this win with wins elsewhere in the South in the next few weeks, he’ll be finished. He might well be a possibility for the Vice Presidency, but Vice Presidential picks only matter at the margins.

For this reason, Republicans in the South ought to get out and vote for the worst candidate with the best chance of winning. In most cases this will be either Dean or Clark. All things considered, I think that we’d rather face Howard Dean than Wesley Clark, and rather Wesley Clark than John Edwards.

And, what of General Clark? A large percentage of Democrats seem to be convinced that, simply because he’s a General, Clark will be invulnerable on national security issues. In fact, nothing is further from the truth: if the Democratic nominee is Clark, the campaign will focus in on military and security issues even more than it would otherwise. Clark, in fact, is strong on national security on the outside and weak on the inside.

Clark, it must be remembered, was fired from his job (or, to be exact, forced into early retirement under threat of firing) as Supreme Allied Commander Europe for what his boss at the time, General Hugh Shelton, described as, “integrity and character issues.” Think about that one for a second. In American history there have been two fired Generals who harboured Presidential ambitions: George McClellan and Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was a national hero- one of the victors of the Second World War- who was fired over a legitimate military disagreement in which most of the American people took his side. He returned home to one of the largest parades in American history and gave a speech before a Joint Session of Congress that is remembered and quoted to this very day. McClellan lead the Union Army through about a year of war, organizing it for victory, before being fired as a result of his timidity and constant refusal to engage Southern forces which he claimed (bizarrely) to be vastly numerically superior to his own. In any case, neither became President (with McClellan being soundly defeated by Lincoln) and both were national heroes who, at the least, could claim some real military accomplishments.

The theory behind the candidacy of General Wesley Clark seems to be that he American people are so stupid that they’ll assume that any man who gets to wear four stars must be competent. This theory is… not borne out by American history. The only war that Clark commanded was the seventy-eight day fiasco in Kosovo, where the military power of the United States proved largely impotent against the might of Serbia and the air campaign was partially undermined because at least one French officer (apparently on the orders of the French government) was passing military secrets on to the Serbs.

Why exactly General Clark would support the concept of fighting a war only with our European ‘allies’ alongside after he went through is somewhat mystifying. In Kosovo the United States did virtually all of the fighting (with, naturally, a little help from the British) while America’s European ‘partners’ found and used various methods of obstruction. In fact, in his first book, Waging Modern War, Clark came off as somewhat hostile to the senseless concept (which he now heartily endorses) of waging war by committee.

In fact, by most accounts, one cannot find a single senior officer who liked General Clark. Most, it would seem, were of the opinion that he would never have achieved four-star rank were it not for the intervention of the Clinton White House. Most felt that he was a chameleon, what Colonel David Hackworth calls a ‘perfumed prince’, a politician in uniform. Clark does not scare me.

As for the Mayor of Vermont- I’m now praying for him to win. His speech tonight was… something. I’ve made the case against Dean elsewhere, so I’ll be brief here: that fellow ain’t right in the head. Seriously.

We cannot let up in the struggle for the American future, this contest in defense of our heritage of liberty. We must never keep in mind what we are really fighting for. If a Democrat wins in November, than al-Qaeda wins the war, and millions of Americans will eventually die as a result.

President Bush is the main enemy of the Islamists just as Osama Bin Laden is the main enemy of America. A vote for anyone other than President Bush, then, is a vote for al-Qaeda. We cannot forget this, and we cannot let anyone who would even contemplate the act forget it either.

The battle rages on all fronts, and we must be prepared to take and support all necessary measures.