This Is War! by Tim Siggia

This Is War!

By Tim Siggia

January 23, 2008

Anyone old enough to have witnessed the presidential election of 1996 should be having a sense of deja vu right about now. Back then, we Republicans made the serious mistake of underestimating the power of the political machine put together by Bill and Hillary Clinton -- a machine the likes of which America has not seen since the days of Tammany Hall, a machine that makes Daley's Chicago of the Sixties look like Mayberry R.F.D. -- and a machine that now threatens to once again do what it did back then.

Today the Clintons are once again at work to orchestrate this year's election in their favor, and install Hillary Rodham Clinton as 44th President of the United States. That threat should not be taken lightly. Put plainly and simply, this is war, and that phrase is not, nor is it intended to be, hyperbole. To Bill and Hillary Clinton, a political team since their college days, election and war are one and the same. The Clinton White House was the only one in history to have a War Room, and it was called just that. The Clintons do not view their political opponents merely as opponents to be defeated, but rather, as enemies to be destroyed, both politically and personally. In the War Room, the plans and strategies were mapped out on how to destroy everyone and anyone who stood in the way of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

If we can for a moment harken back to the events leading up to the 1996 election, we will remember that the prevailing conventional wisdom said afterward that Bob Dole lost that election because he ran a terrible campaign. While this on the face of it is true, it is by no part the entire story. The campaigning for the reelection of Bill Clinton started well before his Republican opponent had even been named. Beginning with a blitz of paid television commercials, it also was abetted by heavy contributions, both monetary and otherwise, from academia, the news media, the entertainment industry, and organized labor, all of which were for the most part were owned by the Clinton machine as they are today. Against this behemoth, the hapless Republicans could pit only individual contributions, corporate contributions which for the most part were canceled out by contributions from the many corporations supporting the Clintons, and talk radio. Bob Dole's age, his pathetic fall from the podium in Chico, California, and the fact that he proved himself an uninspiring speaker were all factors in his defeat, but the truth is that Dole, in addition to all this, faced an election that in advance had been scripted and orchestrated for Bill Clinton to win. He literally never stood a chance.

Today, the perceptive among us are seeing the same play, act for act and scene for scene, being reenacted, only this time with Hillary Clinton rather than her husband as the anointed beneficiary. While the Iowa Caucuses proved to be a misstep for the Clintons, Hillary Clinton has won every caucus and primary since. Once again, luminaries in the fields of education, journalism, entertainment and big labor are salivating over the prospect of another Clinton presidency, and working feverishly both on and behind the scenes to make that happen. Bob Jones University, Liberty University, and Oral Roberts University will be among the predictable few institutions of higher learning not backing Hillary's candidacy, the rest of academia being in lock-step with the Clintons. Fox News is the one and only television news network not under the Clinton thumb. In the field of entertainment, Oprah Winfrey has set herself apart from the pack with her public backing of Illinois senator Barack Obama. Wait and watch, however, for "The O" to be whipped into line after Super Tuesday. It's all in the script, the final act of which will be the installment of Hillary Clinton as president, elected by voters who, at the hands of a formidable and totally thorough propaganda machine, became convinced that she was not merely the better choice, but the only choice.

All this bodes ill for Republicans, who as yet are still undecided on who their standard-bearer will be. All the minor players now have dropped out of the race, with the sole exception of Texas representative Ron Paul, whose support comes mainly from a small but determined cadre of isolationist, libertarian fringe fanatics opposed to America's involvement in Iraq. His candidacy is not taken seriously by most informed observers. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won the Iowa Caucuses for the most part on the strength of a single demographic, evangelical Christians, and has not won a contest since. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, once seen as the nearly-untouchable Republican front-runner, has seen his star peak and fade, and has not yet won a single caucus or primary. He now looks to Florida to revive his sagging candidacy. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson likewise has no primary or caucus wins to his credit, his recent endorsement by the conservative weekly newspaper Human Events having come as too little too late. He too is facing possible extinction in this race.

Which leaves two main contenders for the Republicans: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Arizona senator John McCain, whose dramatic comeback in New Hampshire put him back into contention, and whose win in South Carolina confirmed his standing. Barring some last-minute miracle for either Thompson or Huckabee, it is fairly safe to say at this time that either Romney or McCain will end up being the Republican nominee. Neither is what most would call an all-the-way conservative, their respective departures from traditional conservatism having been already outlined in previous columns I have written. Nevertheless, we must be prepared for one of these two to be the man who will face Hillary Clinton for the ultimate prize in November.

At this writing the primaries are not yet over, so we in Connecticut will have one more opportunity to vote our ideology. After that, we will no longer have that luxury. It will then be incumbent upon us to put ideology aside and back the Republican nominee, no matter who he is or how he may have acted in the past. We literally have no alternative. This year, despite mumblings about what New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg might do, there as yet has been no entry of a serious third-party candidate into the race, which will give Republicans an advantage they lacked in both 1992 and 1996. We must make full use of that advantage, and do everything we can to promote the Republican nominee. On an individual basis we can do this with such time-honored devices as campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and yard signs. We must make whatever financial contributions are within our means, as the McCain-Feingold law allows us to make them, even if the candidate turns out to be the author of that unconstitutional law. We have no choice. We are at war, not merely to win an election, but for the survival of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as we know it. The alternative to this is that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. That alternative is one our country cannot afford, for it will mean the end of the America we have known and loved, and its transformation into a European-style socialist republic, militarily weak, and dominated by an Orwellian, all-pervading, overgrown federal government that dictates to its citizens every aspect of their lives: where and how they will live, what kind of car they will drive, even what kind of food they will eat. Rather than being a country where anyone with the will and ability can succeed, it will be rather a country where success and riches are reserved for the Insiders in a republic of the Clintons, by the Clintons, for the Clintons. Unless this is truly what we want to see come about, we must realize that we are already at war, and arm ourselves now to destroy the Clinton machine once and for all, before it destroys our country and its rich heritage solely for the sake of personal gain for one greedy, selfish, and highly dangerous and destructive couple.