I was hugely amused at the celebrating being done by lefty blogs the last two or three days over what they perceive as signs that some righty bloggers are throwing in the towel and virtually conceding Republican defeat at the polls in November.

Being used to propagating fantasy, we shouldn’t be surprised at this latest bit of wishful thinking on the part of liberals. After all, these are the same folks who were so sure a military draft would be instituted, some of them had plane reservations for Canada. And who can forget “Merry Fitzmas” where a dozen or more White House aides were to be frog marched out of the west wing and into the courthouse after being indicted over the Plame affair.

The list of liberal idiocies is endless. Remember the 10,000 dead American soldiers who were to be lying in the streets of Baghdad following our attack? The million dead Iraqis from starvation and disease? The 500,000 refugees? The “quagmire” in Afghanistan? The civil war that has been predicted in Iraq seven times since May, 2003? Jeff Gannon/Guckert bringing down the President? Ditto Fahrenheit 911, Cindy Sheehan, and a host of minor political scrapes that the left confidently predicted would end up en either Bush’s impeachment or defeat?

So now a few righty bloggers are suffering from battle fatigue and we are supposed to believe that the entire conservative movement is suffering from a crisis of confidence?

Phooey!

I feel for people like The Anchoress, one of my favorite writers, who finds the sniping by the left and carping on the right irksome enough to take a break from writing about politics. And while there has been some discussion at some righty sites about conservatives “staying home” on election day, I can guarantee you that every time Nancy Pelosi opens her mouth, thousands of potential couch potatoes on election day are re-energized and recommitted not to let these morons get control of anything more important than the menu for the Congressional cafeteria.

This is the Republican’s secret weapon; the Democratic party.

With Pelosi frantically trying to backtrack this weekend from her smirking pronouncements about investigations of the President leading to impeachment, it’s clear that the Democrats realize they are their own worst enemy. Try as they might, however, they will be unable to muzzle their base of netnuts who will make Ken Mehlman’s job of getting conservatives to the polls ridiculously easy. Calling for the President’s head on a pike for transgressions big and small (real and imagined) on a daily basis is the only thing that will energize just enough Republicans to march to the polls on election day and hold their noses to vote for the big spending, arrogant SOB’s who have temporarily hijacked the conservative movement for their own selfish purposes. And by just enough, I mean that a loss of half a dozen House seats and 2 or 3 Senators is probably about the best that the GOP can hope for at this point.

While that may sound like a backhanded endorsement of the congressional wing of the GOP (actually more like a closed fist uppercut to the chin), it is not in personalities nor in electoral success where the fire in the bellies of the right burns. Much more than the left, conservatives continue to be energized by issues. Discussions and debates about the serious issues of the day still largely take place only among conservatives because the left has abandoned debate, ceding the battleground in favor of name calling, conspiracy theorizing, and a childish petulance about not getting their way that extends from the outcome of elections to the confirmation of judges.

Foot stomping and tantrum throwing may be personally gratifying for the three year olds who run liberal websites but as far as engaging in meaningful political debate on issues such as taxes (“helping the rich get richer!”), the War (“No blood for Haliburton!”), immigration (Republicans are racist xenophobes!”) or civil liberties (“Bushhitler!”), they leave much to be desired.

This is reflected in the curious, almost cute way in which Duncan Black actually posted something longer than “Bush Sucks! Open Thread,” and tried in that earnest, simple minded way in which liberals tend to approach everything to define what issues today’s liberal Democrat should be supporting.

Basically, it takes the United States back to January 19, 2001. And that’s all you need to know about it. September 11? Never happened. Iraq? Out now! And the rest of the usual lefty ideas about spreading the nice, warm blanket of government control over your lives.

The problem for Black is that national Democrats don’t stand for those things. Their simple strategy to take back Congress is to call Bush and the Republicans names and hope against hope that the economy goes south and something bad happens in Iraq. This strategy proved a real winner in 2004 and while some of the dynamics have changed in their favor, the fact is it is still a long way to November. And of course, no matter how low Bush’s numbers go, he’s still the President and can pull all sorts of rabbits out of his hat to undermine the Democratic cause.

Yes, there are some conservative’s who may have abandoned the GOP congressional party. Some, perhaps permanently. But there’s plenty of time for conservatives to take a deep breath, revitalize their intellects, sharpen their arguments (and their vitriol), and storm the battlements once again. As John Podheretz pointed out here, the consequences of staying on the sideline are too terrible to contemplate:

If a more sober reckoning of political reality does not intrude here, the Right will hurtle headlong toward schism, division, a third party and all sorts of other “pox on all your houses” actions. The cost of this is what I detail in the direst parts of my book Can She Be Stopped? — the easy transfer of power on Capitol Hill and the White House to the Democrats, and particularly to Hillary Clinton.

The potential for self-destruction is terrifying. The potential for grave national harm is worse. Please, you guys, pull back from the edge.

And Ed Morrissey (in a follow up to a post here) puts the choice matter-of-factly:

Declaring all choices as “evil” provides false justification for abdication of that responsibility. In this case, once the primaries have determined the candidates for office, voters are presented with two candidates (in most cases) with realistic chances for victory. They rarely turn out to be philosophical or policy twins and/or uninspired candidates, but if that happens, the parties they represent have real differences, and the choice made in this one race will impact the ability of both to push their national agenda. When voters of either party refuse to vote, the absence of the vote has a negative impact on that national agenda.

By all means, if faced with a choice between Hitler and Mussolini on the November ballot, I would choose to write in Winston Churchill. However, the notion that we face that kind of choice is really nothing more than an expression of anger resulting in futility. It’s eminently understandable, but it results in disaster. The only evil that we likely face is that the American electorate has grown so dismissive of the political process that it may squander its birthright. People across the political spectrum need to stay engaged in the process through the vote in order to get a government that most truly represents us—and if we don’t like the final choices presented us, then we must work harder in the next cycle to ensure that the final choices improve.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that. And this is why all that celebrating done by the left over the imminent demise and crack up of the right is just a tad premature. In the end, conservatives will come home.