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Conservative victories have occurred when conservatives have played hardball, not when Republicans have acquiesced to and compromised with their enemies. Gingrich's Contract with America campaign in 1994 successfully captured the House of Representatives for the GOP for the first time in 40 years simply by being forthrightly conservative. Had Cuban Americans and other GOP activists not been militant in preventing Democratic officials in South Florida with ballot box stuffing, Florida and this the 2000 election would have been won by Al Gore. Homeschoolers have found in case after case that no compromising with respect to the right of parents to educate their children results in greater freedom to home school. Had the Klamath Falls area farmers rolled over and played dead when the Feds restricted access to water needed for irrigation, they would have been forced to quit farming at a sizable economic loss. The Swift Boat veterans, with their determination to expose John Kerry's less than stellar military record, helped turn the tide against the Democratic challenger in 2004. Bloggers and talk radio effectively exposed the fraud that Mary Mapes and Dan Rather attempted to foist on the American public regarding President Bush's military record. Had conservatives of almost all stripes not firmly opposed Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court vacancy, she would have been exposed to the flames of the liberal lynch mob on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The lesson is that toughness and militancy work, compromise and appeasement do not. I am sure that, given Arlen Spector's duplicity with regard to the warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists, President Bush regrets supporting him over his conservative opponent in the GOP primary in Pennsylvania two years ago. The President has been admirably tough regarding the enemy abroad; he or his successor need to use the same tactic toward the enemy within.