Columnist David Brooks is the sort of writer who passes for a conservative at The New York Times. In reality, he is an urbane, pseudo-erudite hack, as evidenced by his latest column.

Brooks contends that the reason conservatives are no longer winning elections is because we have eschewed intellectualism and promoted social class warfare, thereby “driving away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts.” In the last two decades, according to Brooks, conservative politicians and “talk-radio jocks” have “divided the nation between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.”

Brooks also asserts that “George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party.” That argument is absurd. It is precisely because of Bush’s excesses, not the GOP’s, that he has a 29 percent approval rating: excesses in spending, a nearly trillion-dollar bailout bill, and lax border security. Bush deserves credit for three accomplishments in eight years: modest tax relief, a pair of solid Supreme Court appointments and especially for seven years of terror-free life for the American people. After that, the list of his accomplishments goes downhill quickly.

Yet Brooks lists “anti-immigration fervor” and “isolationism” as the “excesses” from which Bush supposedly saved his party. Question: In what world does David Brooks live that he believes such things? Answer: The solipsistic echo-chamber of New York City.

Brooks criticizes John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, as if that is the source of McCain’s current problems. He seems to believe that Palin adds to the GOP’s exclusion of the groups he thinks have been driven from the party. “Nobody,” Brooks writes, “so relentlessly divides the world between the ‘normal Joe Sixpack American’ and the coastal elite.”

But the most astounding part of Brooks’ analysis is his statement that Republicans are guilty of alienating whole professions — lawyers, doctors, tech executives, even bankers — all of whom now donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.

As a lifelong resident of flyover country, I hardly know where to begin to refute Brooks’ snobbery. So let’s stop dancing around the subject. The reason these groups feel alienated from the Republican Party is that they are embarrassed by those of us who want to defend innocent human life and traditional marriage. They simply cannot believe that these issues are more important to us than a temporary drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But their embarrassment goes much deeper than that. The gulf is primarily a spiritual one. Those of us who believe in fighting for the defense of life and — dare I say it? — for the preservation of normal, traditional, monogamous human sexual relationships do so out of a belief that someone much greater and wiser than we are, namely the Creator of the Universe, has said this is how we should live. This is not an arbitrary position we have taken in order to deny “reproductive rights” to women or “equal rights” to homosexuals. These are strongly held views given to believers by God, universal truths, if you will. No religious tradition in the world believes in killing babies or in homosexual marriage.

So let’s be totally honest. George W. Bush has failed the Republican Party and, more importantly, the American people, in almost every regard. He has spent our money in a manner that would make a drunken sailor ashamed, grown the federal government at a faster rate than any president since FDR, colluded with Ted Kennedy and his ilk on education policy, and given us stimulus checks with the caveat to spend them on plasma TVs and IPhones, rather than existing debt (or the terrorists win). And he has spent eight years asleep at the wheel on illegal immigration.

The Republican Party has not rejected intellectualism. The definition of the word has been hijacked by the William Ayers and the Ward Churchills of the world, with their pithy rejoinders that 9/11 victims were “little Eichmanns.” One need only read Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn or Christopher Buckley to know that conservative intellectualism is alive and well.

What sets conservatives, and by extension the GOP, apart is that we have always encouraged vigorous debate and the civil discourse necessary for the continuation of this American experiment. It is the foundation of our republic and the catalyst to our best ideas. But we succeed in our intellectual pursuits only because they stand firmly on the solid rock of our morality, our spirituality and our admission of and submission to the God that grants our souls the right to breathe. The sinking sand of liberal dogma will never be a suitable substitute.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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Omaha, Nebraska — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, was here, of all places, on Sunday to breathe some much-needed life into her running mate’s lackluster candidacy. It may simultaneously indicate a rational strategy and a sense of panic on the part of the McCain campaign.

The state of Nebraska is about as reliably red as any state in the country. In both the 2000 and 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush carried all 93 of the state’s counties, and a higher percentage of the popular vote than he received in his native Texas. In fact, the last time a Democrat carried Nebraska in a presidential race was 1964, the year Republican Barry Goldwater was swamped by Lyndon Johnson.

With the news that McCain is suspending campaign activity in the heretofore contested state of Michigan, one has to ask, why Omaha? The answer lies in the unique manner in which the Cornhusker State allocates its electoral votes. Only Nebraska and Maine apportion their votes according to who wins a particular congressional district.

Nebraska has five electoral votes, two at-large and one for each of its three congressional districts. If McCain wins the state as a whole, which he is expected to do easily, he will be awarded the state’s two at-large electoral votes. The other three will be awarded based on who wins a given congressional district. The problem during this razor-close election is that Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, comprised mainly of the city of Omaha, could go either way.

This possibility has not been lost on the left-wing blogosphere, either. The Daily Kos recently posted Omaha voter registration information on their web site. It reads as follows:

“According to the Douglas County Election Commission, as of October 1, 2008, there are 119,858 registered Democrats and 121,664 Republicans, a difference of only 1806. Douglas County makes up approximately 90 percent of the 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska…The Douglas County Democratic Party took full advantage of the 2008 Nebraska Democratic Caucus and from May 2007 through the Caucuses, 8,494 Democrats were added to the Democratic Party rolls. DCDP’s Vote Omaha Project reached its 10,000th Democrat on March 13, 2008. In total, DCDP has added 17,721 voters to the Democratic Party since May 2007.”

The Omaha appearance gave Gov. Palin a duel opportunity to reach out to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, but also to Western Iowa, which tends to be the most conservative part of that purple state.

Truth be told, Nebraska and Maine probably have it right. The Left would likely be shocked to see how purple their blue states really are. The fact that 55 to 60 percent of a state like California has tilted blue for lo these many decades is a very undemocratic way of letting the voice of the people be heard. But perhaps that is the point. The Democrats have relied on the fact that two or three big cities can drown out the voices of 50 little ones. Maybe it is time the little cities had a chance to speak.

If McCain is smart, he himself will make an appearance in Omaha before the election. The aforementioned breakdown of Democrat versus Republican voter registration in Douglas County is not truly reflective of the ideological divide between the two parties. A Nebraska Democrat is not the same animal as a Massachusetts, New York or California Democrat. He or she may be fiscally conservative, in support of the Second Amendment and of the war on terror and may very well even be pro-life. This is exactly the type of Democrat to whom John McCain can appeal. There are also a lot of independent votes he can win here.

John McCain and Sarah Palin can still win this election. In the same way that Democrat primary voters spent the latter races handing victory after victory to Hillary Clinton, the voters of Omaha, Nebraska, and the rest of the nation will spend the next month soul searching as to whether they can really vote to put a radical like Barack Obama in the White House.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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Contrary to popular belief, conservative Christian pastors have never been monolithic in their willingness to engage in anything close to partisan political activity in their churches. The stereotypical perception of the “religious right” in America is a myth. I know. I was there in the cultural trenches in the mid-1990s, trying to inform Christian voters of the records of the candidates for office.

As a state executive director and organizer for one of the largest pro-life, pro-family organizations in the country, I was frustrated constantly by the reticence of pastors to allow even a simple, informative voter guide to be placed into their church bulletins. A handful was bold enough to speak out. Some were willing to allow the voter guides. Most were just plain timid and afraid.

Afraid of what? Why, the IRS, of course — or, as my great aunt used to refer to it, “the Infernal Revenue Service.”

Far too many on the Christian right have been bamboozled into believing that it is somehow against the law to engage in any sort of political activity whatsoever within the four walls of a church. In fact, many pastors are so paranoid about it they shun vital information that could help their congregations know right from wrong once they get into the voting booth.

Now comes word that a tiny cadre of three dozen or so activist pastors, working in conjunction with the Arizona-based religious rights legal firm known as the Alliance Defense Fund, are not only exercising their constitutional rights but also stand ready to challenge a 1954 amendment to the tax code that says nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in or intervene in…any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”

These church leaders have come to realize that there is nothing in the law that forbids them, as pastors, from telling their congregations whom they personally endorse — and why. And they are challenging the notion that they should be proscribed from putting forth a church endorsement based on a candidate’s positions on issues that may be contrary to the moral teaching of that church.

One of these pastors is the Rev. Ron Johnson, Jr., of Crown Point, Indiana, who says that ministers of the Gospel have a responsibility to guide their flocks in worldly matters, including politics.

“The issue,” says Rev. Johnson, “is not ‘Are we legislating morality?’ The issue is, ‘Whose morality are we legislating?’”

Although he has stopped short of endorsing Republican John McCain, Rev. Johnson has rightly told his congregation that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s positions on abortion and homosexual relationships are “in direct opposition to God’s truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures” and has shown slides in his church contrasting the two candidates’ views on key issues important to pro-family voters.

Of course, the Religious Left, especially as it has traditionally promoted liberal Democrats in black churches across the country, has been engaging in highly partisan political activity for as long as many of us can remember. In one particularly blatant case, I recall an inner city church van covered with political posters of Democrat candidates encouraging black voters to “vote Democrat.”

This van was sent out into the community to register Democrats, transport them to the polls and bring them to a makeshift Democrat campaign headquarters being run out of the church basement. When the state Republican Party chairman took photos of the van and sent them to the local news media, they were officially ignored.

It is encouraging to see a small but determined group of Godly men and women reach out to their congregations with the truth about Barack Obama’s radical political views and culturally toxic voting record. It is time for evangelical Christians to stop being taken in by lofty rhetoric. It is time for men of God to stand up and be heard on the great issues of our time.
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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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On the night of Thursday, October 2nd, first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will face off against six-term U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware in their only scheduled debate of this campaign season. The conventional wisdom says that Biden, while being careful not to appear mean or condescending toward Gov. Palin, must simply display the fruits of his 35 years of experience in Washington in order to hold his own. But as is so often the case, conventional wisdom fails to take into account how wrong Biden has been on almost everything over the years.

While John McCain was still being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, Joe Biden, like every flippant Democrat of that time, came to the U.S. Senate opposing the Vietnam War. Once elected, he voted to cut off funds to the South Vietnamese government, thereby ensuring a Communist victory.

In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan was facing down the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” Joe Biden favored the utopian notion of a nuclear freeze and opposed the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, saying, “The president’s continued adherence to SDI constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”

Biden supported Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega and fought Reagan’s attempts to support the Contras opposing him. He also opposed many other necessary weapons systems, such as the Trident submarine, the B-2 bomber and the Pershing ballistic missile.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the whole world rose up to support the coalition led by President George H.W. Bush. Not Joe Biden. He opposed the use of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War, thereby voting to allow Saddam Hussein to continue raping and pillaging a neighboring country, stealing their oil and threatening the nearby Saudi Arabian oil fields.

When America again found it necessary to take on Saddam Hussein in 2003, Joe Biden thought it would be a bright idea to split the country into three ethnic states: Sunistan, Shiastan and Kurdistan. Then, last year, when John McCain was urging the Bush administration to implement the surge in Iraq, Joe Biden voted ‘no.’

And those are just some of Joe Biden’s foreign policy misjudgments. His judgment on domestic policy is just as bad. He claims to be Catholic and yet supports abortion, and his votes on judicial appointments prove it. As chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he opposed some of the best Supreme Court nominees of our time: Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He voted for Antonin Scalia but later said he regretted it.

A believer in gun control, Biden receives an ‘F’ from the National Rifle Association. He supported lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence, but voted ‘no’ on more penalties for gun and drug violations. So, to review, he wants the victim of a gun crime to be able to sue the manufacturer of the gun, but he wants no additional penalties imposed upon the perpetrator of that crime. Sounds like typical liberal thinking to me. A lifetime NRA member, Sarah Palin could have a field day with that one.

Biden also wants to raise taxes, just as Obama does. He not only favors allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, he wants to raise new ones as well.

Sarah Palin should embrace the Ronald Reagan debate philosophy: be yourself and trust your conservative political instincts, knowing that while you will not win over every voter, enough of the American people share your values that you will prevail over the class warfare, international appeasement and emotional gibberish of the Left. In fact, Palin should perhaps quote Reagan on the silliness that is liberalism. One of my favorites from the Gipper was when he said, “It’s not that liberals don’t know anything; it’s just that so much of what they know just isn’t so.”

Yes, Joe Biden is knowledgeable in the ways of Washington. His inside-the-beltway experience is extensive. But he has been on the wrong side of history for 35 years, and Sarah Palin should come out swinging and point out that fact at every opportunity.
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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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Here is the statement John McCain should put out right now and stick to for the rest of this campaign: “I believe Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are both qualified to be vice president. The Democrats just have their ticket upside down.”

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be the Republican vice presidential nominee is energizing the GOP base like nothing John McCain has ever done. Indeed, just as Barack Obama had to prop up his weak credentials by picking someone with experience, John McCain had to bolster his long resume, filled with heroism, military skill and governmental knowledge with a fresh, solid, proven conservative who has walked the walk and not just talked the talk.

Sarah Palin is the real deal. From her days as a tenacious high school basketball player and beauty queen to her meteoric rise through the ranks of Alaska politics, she didn’t get the nickname ‘Sarah Barracuda’ for nothing. She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a compassionate 44-year-old mother of five, including a Down’s syndrome child born in April of this year.

Unlike Barack Obama, who thought so highly of himself that he wrote two autobiographies before he accomplished anything, Mrs. Palin has raised a family, run a business, managed a city and governed a state. She took on corrupt members of her own party, toppled a sitting Republican governor and said ‘no’ to Alaska’s infamous bridge to nowhere. She is pro-life, pro-family, pro-Second Amendment and pro-free enterprise. She is the governor of America’s most natural resource-rich state and is an advocate of oil drilling in ANWR. (Perhaps she can talk some sense into McCain on that issue.)

Oh, and she has an 80 percent approval rating among Alaskans.

It will be interesting to see how many disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters will vote Republican in November because of Palin’s name on the ballot. Will they abandon the worn out big government programs of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who offer the same tired ideas proposed by George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry before them? Will all those 85-year-old women who kept saying, “I just wanted to live long enough to see a woman elected,” now take advantage of their opportunity? If gender is their criteria, this is their chance.

There are so many reasons liberals are going to hate running against this ticket. First, there is the fact that the big liberal lie will soon be proven false: namely that conservatives won’t vote for a woman. I have contended for some time that conservatives of all stripes — social, fiscal, national security — would support a woman or a minority without hesitation if that person had the right worldview. The exciting thing for most of us is that we now have an opportunity to elect a truly conservative female to help lead our country.

Also, unlike Hillary Clinton, who has gotten where she is on the back of a philandering husband, Palin has done it on her own. In short, Sarah Palin is the ultimate feminist, and the Left can’t stand the fact that she not only is not one of them, she is their antithesis: a conservative wife and mother who loves God, shoots guns, eats Moose burgers, treasures traditional marriage and values innocent human life. And she’s attractive and articulate to boot! She’s their worst nightmare!

Alaska is often described as the last frontier, the last vestige of wild, rugged America. This is not simple nostalgia pining for a bygone era. Alaska is a crucible (albeit a frozen one), and you don’t get elected dog catcher there unless you are up to the job. Barack Obama’s refined enunciations are an unacceptable substitute for action. And that is precisely what John McCain has found in Sarah Palin — a woman of action.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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