Whatever one thinks of each individual poll, the overall trend is beyond dispute: President Bush is on the rebound. Thursday’s Rasmussen poll (Rasmussen was, by far, the more accurate pollster during the 2004 election) has the President at 48% approval among adults which, if traditional patterns were to be followed, would place his approval at over 50% among likely voters. Even his worst poll – Gallup – has him well above his nadir.

I do not believe that George Walker Bush has superhuman powers – but I think one might be excused for believing so. In the last few months the President has gone through crisis after crisis: massive natural disasters, temporary economic dislocations, an unpopular war, scandal in the Congress and in the Executive Branch, a failed Supreme Court nomination – and he’s survived them all. Part of this, admittedly, is due to the ineptitude of his opponents. But, in large measure, this repeated success can be attributed to the personal character of George W. Bush – perhaps the most remarkable and fascinating man of the age. Here we have a man who has somehow attained the Presidency who is determined to lead. We have a President who has taken risks and done things that no other man in his place would have done. In this President – as inarticulate and frustrating as he can sometimes be – we have a leader with the wisdom to know when to fight and when to wait.

In retrospect, one can’t help but wonder if the President and his team took a calculated decision to take political heat over Iraq in 2005 – to hold back from retaliation – long enough for the Democrats to make enough rope for us to hang them with. Instead of attacking the Democrats outright and allowing them to play the role of wounded patriots, the White House waited long enough for them to make the transition from being crypto-apologists for the enemy to openly advocating their cause.

I’m reminded of Nelson’s admonition that no Captain could do wrong who placed his ship alongside that of the enemy. This would seem to be exactly what has happened here. The Republicans – the loyal Republicans at least – waited until they could drive a full broadside into the Democrats. The key now is to simply blast away until either they strike their colors or until the blood-stained decks of their burning ships are headed for the bottom.

To put it another way, what we’ve just seen is a Democratic Ardennes – the final offensive of a defeated enemy. With the setbacks sustained by the President, the Democrats thought that they had a chance to launch a final offensive to turn back Republican gains. Instead, they merely exposed their forces to total and final annihilation.

I’m not saying that the Democratic Party is done forever – it’s been around too long and too many people have too much invested in it for that. But it might well be done for a while. The Global War on Terrorism is the issue of our age – all other issues are secondary and will be for some time to come – and the Democrats have gotten themselves on the wrong side of history.

This has happened before, of course. The parallels between the present situation and that of the Civil War are uncanny. As in the Civil War, the Democrats initially sought to ensure that they were seen as being as patriotic as the Republicans. Then they carefully began to exploit the natural discontents of conflict in order to sow dissension among the people and, in doing so, met with some success. Finally, emboldened by their victories, they began to take openly disloyal positions – from Vallandigham’s cries for “peace at any price” to Dean’s assertion that the war could not be won there flows an age-old heritage of disloyalty which is the shame of the Democrat Party and why it should fairly, then as well as now, be known as the “Party of Treason.”

Spin can do a lot. Politics can do a lot. But, when someone ends up on the wrong side of history, the tides will soon prove irresistible.

In the 1860’s the Democrats ended up on the wrong side of history – and they paid the price.

In the 1930’s, the Republicans did the same – and they paid a similar price.

In the 1970’s, the Democrats did the same thing and, were it not for the Cold War, they would have been out of the White House for a generation as a result.

Now, today, the Democrats have gotten themselves on the wrong side of history on the Terror War and on Iraq. I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks that history will judge Michael Moore, Howard Dean, or their ilk kindly. In twenty years, when a flourishing Iraq is an American ally at the heart of a democratic Middle East, what will be said of the progressives who stood against progress? I have no doubt that history, harsh but fair, will render the solemn verdict: guilty.

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the Democrats thought that he’d made a fatal mistake. He had, they charged, taken America into war under false pretenses – the war for the restoration of the Union as it was thus became a radical revolution which created the Union as it is.

When Bush proclaimed his doctrine of freedom, it transformed the Iraq War and the whole of the Global War on Terrorism. It changed the war from a war waged for limited aims – not unlike those of the wars of the 1990’s – into an epic struggle which will decide the fate of great tracts of the Earth. It changed a conflict over WMD’s and over capturing a few al-Qaeda terrorists into a war whose goal is the advance of liberty to the whole of the Earth.

Bush didn’t start this fire anymore than Lincoln lit the blaze of Emancipation. But history will credit him for it. He was the necessary condition for this revolution in human affairs to come to pass.

People recognize this. The people are often stupid – but they are not deaf, dumb, and blind. They may not understand – or wish to comprehend – the details. But they know. They know that something special is happening in the world. They know that there are dangers and that there are unprecedented opportunities. They can see that the Democrats are not up to the challenges of this day.

What this means in terms of practical politics ought to be easy to understand. We win; you lose. The Democrats have nothing to offer the people but stale criticism which has already been overtaken by events. Just as we have won, we will go on winning. Not because we’re tricky. Not because we steal elections. But because we are in the right. Because we know that God sees and that he is not neutral.