Don't Stay Home

Bill Bennett writes at The Corner a number of good reasons why conservatives must get out and vote this November, and why expressing dissatisfaction with the GOP leadership by staying home is a bad idea:

Okay, look. Now is the time for all good men—and women—to come to the aid of the party.

In 1960, Barry Goldwater famously shouted, "Grow Up Conservatives." It took 20 years for that call to be heeded, and we got the expanded, entrenched Welfare State, a disastrous & humilitaing foreign policy in the meantime; and Ronald Reagan's presidency was about attempting to roll back those 20 years as much as moving forward on a positive agenda.

Look, if you want John Paul Stevens replaced on the Supreme Court with a carbon copy, pro-choice, pro-racial preferences Justice, stay home.

If you want Donald Rumsfeld hauled before Congress every week justifying the war rather than fighting it, stay home.

If you want spending to increase even above the levels you are unhappy with now, stay home.

If you want Henry Waxman holding hearings on every aspect of the administration's actions, stay home.

If you want to see the war in Iraq defunded to the point of withdrawal so that the worst elements in Iraq take over and a repeat of the helicopters-fleeing-Saigon-type-images come back all over again, signaling a decade-long disrespect and doubt of American power, stay home.

If you want to keep the border unsealed, stay home.

The stakes are large, we can't afford twenty years, we can't afford two years of this. If you want a change in your Congressional leadership, fine, wait until you have the election, then demand it, with a new GOP speaker and majority leader if you want...but let me tell you, a new minority leader and a new minority whip will not get you much, it won't get you anything.

Two years ago we sent a message by reelecting the President, have things fallen so hard since then that we can't muster those numbers again and see that the good should not be traded in for the bad? You want to rue a day? You will rue a day with John Conyers as head of the House Judiciary and Pat Leahy as head of the Senate Judiciary. Don't do it. Please don't do it.

Good advice.