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I fear in the next election we are going to see, as I posted before, the political version of shock and awe.

Please explain, if possible add to your previous postings--what do you see since this past election that tells you we're in for even bigger trouble next election?

I have my own ideas about this. I defended Bush frequently around here, but the bailout thing still has be stunned, an unbelivable acceptance of Big Government as Big Brother, Sister, Mom, Dad and Maiden Aunt, there to soften all blows. As we've seen since, this "gotta have it NOW!!!!" boondoggle has not only inspired companies to simply say "Forget new business models, we'll just go get more money from our customers through the government!" but it's not even what it was to begin with! It seems like Paulson just got this big pile of money and THEN thought about what he would like to do with it.

Bush sure did Obama a big service with this. And McCain went along with it, no surprise--he is a fan of Teddy Roosevelt, but not the one most conservatives seem to like but the real TR, who was a liberal no matter how you slice it.

Forget that McCain looked like he was panicking, Bush trusted his economic team, and now it looks like all their Chicken Little stuff did precisely what it was intended to do--deliver even more control over the economy to DC. Does anyone seriously believe that Obama's economic team will be more conservative than Bush's? And how conservative was Bush's?

What I am about to say should be discounted because of the source. I heard Bill Kristol on one of the talk shows declare that he had spoken to players closely connected to Obama who advised Bill Kristol that they expected the country to go into the equivalent of the Great Depression. Certainly nothing in Paulson's behavior contradicts that assessment. I don't think anybody knows, not Warren Buffett, not Hank Paulson, and certainly not Barak Obama. It is known, however, that the Obama team is likening their takeover to Franklin Roosevelt's in 1932.

Clearly, they intend to exploit fully the economic and social dislocation which is currently creeping over us to do "good." Obama's Chief of Staff has acknowledged just that, indeed, he was eager to tell us just that. That could mean that Obama feels secure in appointing centerleft cabinet members outside of the economic arena, leaving a Republican at defense and putting Hillary at state(imagine describing Hillary Clinton as center but Ileft), because he intends to work the economic levers to achieve Marxist goals. As a disciple of Alinsky, he can be expected to be very patient but relentless. The worst-case scenario, as described by the blogger appearing in the American Thinker, HOWELL (?), is one in which Obama appears to be center-left but actually profoundly changes our institution and works an irretrievable Marxist revolution.

tough I don't know how bad the coming economic storm will be but, judging by your relatives, it is already bad enough for them to throw away their lifelong standards. Apart from talk radio which is in mortal peril, there is no national institution to oppose Obama should he socialize the economy.

There is no generation, except us old timers with the cultural memory to oppose him. We have no spokesman who can break through the media lockbox and get the attention of the American people, and, change perceptions. It is much easier to convince people than to unconvince them. The Republican brand has no credibility on economic issues having squandered it under George Bush. Conservatism, as such, can gain no traction merely being the skunk at the garden party calling for fiscal restraint. Mothers want to feed their babies.

By the time the next election rolls around, the electorate will be bathed in a whole new vocabulary, the demographics will have been altered by immigration and wholesale naturalizations, the old rules simply will not apply and the Internet savvy Democrats and leftists will have no intention of playing by 20th-century rules.

On our side, there does not seem to be any recognition of mortal peril for conservatism and for the country. We need an Oliver Cromwell but we're getting a Michael Steele. We slept walked into the defeats of 2006 and 2008 and there is no sign of any awakening yet. We are dying off and demographic changes are swelling their ranks. They are able to raise hundreds of billions of dollars and we are, perhaps rightly, closing our checkbooks to teach our side a lesson. In power, the left will extort untold money from business. As the government backs winners and abandons losers to bankruptcy in the economic crisis, political contributions will flood into Democratic coffers.

There is simply no positive perspective. The history of the Great Depression certainly does not provide one.

I'm sorry, I did not address your point.

Militarily I think shock and awe means that the modern weaponry disables the ability of the enemy to command and control, to assess and react, to coordinate. The victim does not even know what happened to his assets, they simply vaporized. He cannot find out because his lines of communication are gone. His weapons, assets, and soldiers go unemployed and become useless to the victim. He becomes bewildered, operates at cross purposes and without any effective strategy, becomes demoralized and simply quits.

One can expect to see much the same in the oncoming election. Republicans are making a pitch across the board to the better angels of the People's nature. The Democrats are organizing cells, groups, unions, races, industries, sexual preferences, and classes and appealing to them in such ways as to make them utterly impervious to the voice of reason. We saw this in the last election and we think it is because of the race issue. We think that people abandoned a reasonable skepticism about Barak Obama's radicalism because they focused on race and wanted to rid themselves of white guilt. But what if that is not the only answer? What if the Democrats have succeeded in cobbling together a critical mass which operates pursuant to stimuli which cannot be touched by conservatism? For example, blacks would have voted for Barak Obama regardless of his politics. Can you conceive of a rational series of constitutional arguments which will appeal to the gay vote on their issue? How his reason ever had the slightest impact on arch feminists? Couple all this with profound anti-Christian bigotry and you have an electorate wide open to manipulation.

I expect to see community organization going on in South Carolina! If the rats have figured out the formula to slice and dice the electorate into subgroups and deliver a Scientology/multilevel marketing approach at the grassroots, the game might well be over. A computerized, poll driven, grass-roots campaign can do just exactly that each subgroup and individuals can be identified and approached by neighbors. I think that's exactly what the Obama folks are trying to do with their questionnaire right now-identify bellringers. All of this will be done with computer strokes until the moment the doorbell is pressed. We will not know what hit us, and so we will not know how to cope. Instinctively, conservatives will appeal to reason, which in this circumstance will have about as much palliative effect as invoking reason to control diarrhea.