CONCLUSION

In 2012, as the GOP presidential primary contests were unfolding and many Republicans voiced dissatisfaction with the field of candidates, a surprising number of conservatives began to rationalize that our most important goal in November was to win both houses of Congress. If we were to succeed in doing that, they argued, we could stop Obama’s agenda and prevent further damage until the 2016 election, when we would no longer have to contend with the bizarre phenomenon of a president whose personal approval ratings remain much higher than those of his policies.

I am skeptical of the conventional wisdom that Obama is still personally popular. Even if some Americans remain duped by his faux charisma, they have seen how he has behaved in office: the bullying, the class warfare, the demonization of opponents, the narcissism, the rigid dogmatism. I was and remain confident that Obama is eminently beatable as long as Republicans don’t repeat their mistake of soft-peddling Obama’s disastrous record and the danger he represents to the republic, and as long as they aren’t cowered into diluting their agenda and abandoning their platform—a decidedly conservative platform—on the mistaken assumption that the only way to defeat him is to cater to so-called centrists.

If there were ever a time in our history that conservatism should be a winning message, it is now, after the nation has suffered from nearly four years of unbridled liberalism. Unlike today’s mainstream liberalism, mainstream conservatism is not extremism, and Republicans must quit apologizing for it and running from it. If Republicans soften their message too much, they will demoralize their base and reduce voter intensity, which will be devastating if we are to overcome the inevitable electoral chicanery that we’ll see in 2012 from Team Obama’s nationwide, coordinated community organizing effort.

The way to win this election is to accentuate and emphasize the stark contrasts between the conservative agenda—a true blueprint for hope, optimism, and national resurrection—and Obama’s actual, abysmal record. We’ve not had a president since Jimmy Carter who has performed so poorly on the economy, foreign policy, and social issues. More important is our runaway national debt; no U.S. president has ever been so willing to push America over the financial cliff as Obama’s doing now.

No matter what went on before, no matter how much each party may have contributed to the accumulation of our national debt, Obama has shifted our deficit spending and debt trajectory into hyper-speed, and he and his entire party defiantly refuse to reverse this horrifying trend. They offer no constructive solutions and no semblance of a plan even to stop the fiscal bleeding, much less restructure entitlements to avert the impending disaster. Instead, they demagogue and stir up angst and distrust between people on the basis of race, gender, and, most notably, economic “class.” Obama and his Democrats attack the productive and successful, the corporations and the banks, though nothing constructive can come from his broadsides except, from his perspective, a sufficient diversion from his egregious record, without which he can’t possibly win re-election.

Whatever we do, we cannot buy into the false notion that a GOP House and Senate will be sufficient to hold us over until 2016. The country, as scrupulously documented in these pages, is on autopilot to bankruptcy. We have only a short window to restructure our entitlements—according to Paul Ryan, between two and three years. So Obama’s re-election would ensure that we remain on that course. Not only would a Republican Congress be virtually powerless to reverse Obama’s bankrupting policies, but he would see his re-election as a green light to do further end-runs around Congress by ramping up his mischief through renegade administrative agencies that would doubtless be even more defiant and unaccountable in his second term.

Moreover, if you think Obama was radical during his first four years, then wait until he is re-elected and has four whole years when he doesn’t have to worry about the voters. Just contemplate his agenda to date: his assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, the American idea, and his numerous apologies for America; his attack on the free market and American businesses, corporations, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; his appointment of radical czars and liberal activist judges; his $868 billion corrupt and wasteful stimulus bill; his annual deficits consistently in excess of $1 trillion; his reckless path toward doubling the national debt in two terms and his obstruction of entitlement reform; his miserable economy and sky-high unemployment record; his S&P credit downgrade; his mistreatment of our allies and pandering to our enemies; his reprehensible treatment of Israel; his high-handed, unconstitutional invocations of military action without congressional consultation, much less approval; his conversion of the War on Terror into a law enforcement matter; his insulting and semantic redefinition of war to “overseas contingency operations” and “kinetic military actions”; his unconscionable assistance to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; his government’s takeover of GM and Chrysler and his restructuring of its loans by lawlessly subordinating the rights of secured creditors to his unsecured union allies; his war against the states on immigration enforcement, abortion funding, and traditional marriage; his EPA’s end-runs around Congress and its imposition of draconian rules on American citizens; his unilateral forgiveness and restructuring of mortgage indebtedness; his federal takeover of student loans; his gutting of the military and our national defenses; his support of Big Labor; his NLRB’s attack on businesses; his public efforts to intimidate the Supreme Court; his empowering of ACORN and all its corruption; his commandeering of one-seventh of the nation’s economy and thwarting the people’s will in cramming ObamaCare down our throats; his atrocious Dodd-Frank financial bill; his war on oil drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline, and the rest of the conventional domestic energy pantheon; his corrupt federal funding of Solyndra and other green energy debacles; his grossly politicized Department of Justice with its abominable Fast and Furious operation and subsequent cover-up and its racialist application of voter intimidation laws; his war on religious liberty and the right to life; his slander of insurance companies, banks, oil companies, private jet owners, and America itself; his arrogant lack of transparency; his endless rote speeches; his bullying, divisiveness, race-, gender-, and class-warfare; and the myriad other items documented in this book and in Crimes Against Liberty.

Next, consider what else Obama might have accomplished had the GOP Congress not stood in his way: cap-and-trade; another $50 billion stimulus bill for high-speed rail; his $447 billion American Jobs Act; capital gains tax hikes; other income tax hikes during his perpetually sluggish economy; and many other spending schemes stopped dead in their tracks—for starters.

Finally, try to imagine what types of overreaches he would attempt if he were re-elected. I have no doubt that if he wins in November, America will be destined to pass the point of no return in its headlong rush to Grecian-style bankruptcy, European socialism on steroids, national weakness, and the end of American freedom as we know it. It will be little comfort to be vindicated in these predictions, because that would mean that our generation had squandered the glorious legacy of freedom bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents, and that we would have stolen from our children and grandchildren this same wondrous legacy.

It is still not too late to save America and restore her to a path of greatness, of robust liberty, and of economic prosperity. But I fear it is not hyperbole to suggest that it very well may be too late if we don’t end this madness in November 2012 by voting Barack Obama out of office. God bless all you patriots fighting for the survival and continued greatness of this nation. God bless the most wonderful Constitution “ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man,” and God bless this American Republic.