Dr. Jack Wheeler, TheVanguard.Org board member and architect of the Reagan Doctrine:

“Republicans should tactically exploit the certain fracturing on the Left: we have the Blue Dogs, the Hillary crowd, and radical leftists — one of whom is about to be speaker. Even the Left’s backers like Eleanor Clift (current article on MSN) see trouble ahead. I laughed all day hearing the talk about consensus building and getting along — there ain’t gonna be none! Not with this crew. The Dems have essentially a three way split. The Republicans need to widen it.”

Read on.

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A Luta Continua

by Jack Wheeler
November 9, 2006

That’s Portuguese for “The Struggle Continues.”  It was the mantra and motto of the RENAMO (Resisténcia Nacional de Moçambicana) guerrillas fighting to liberate Mozambique from Communist tyranny in the 1980s.

Of all the anti-Soviet freedom fighters I spent time with, they were the ones I liked the most.  Now, their mantra should be that of conservatives who wish to preserve their country from the Hate America Left.

It certainly is of TTP member Erik Larson, who commented in the User Forum:

Republicans should tactically exploit the certain fracturing on the Left: we have the Blue Dogs, the Hillary crowd, and radical leftists — one of whom is about to be speaker. Even the Left’s backers like Eleanor Clift (current article on MSN) see trouble ahead. I laughed all day hearing the talk about consensus building and getting along — there ain’t gonna be none! Not with this crew. The Dems have essentially a three way split. The Republicans need to widen it.

This is excellent advice.  I discussed it with a Republican Congressman (happily re-elected) who agreed, especially about the Blue Dogs.

(They’re a coalition of Conservative Democrats in Congress originally formed back in 1994 by Louisiana reps Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes, both of whom displayed on their office walls the paintings of Cajun artist George Rodrigue who had the quirk of portraying hunting hounds as blue.  So they nicknamed themselves as a contrast with the old expression “Yellow Dog” Democrat, a now-extinct species of southern voter who so hated the party of Lincoln he would vote for a yellow dog rather than a Republican.)

One interesting development of the election was the defeat of several “moderate” RINO Republicans to whom my friend was glad to say good riddance:  Nancy Johnson (CT), Jim Leach (IA), Charlie Bass (NH), and Jeb Bradley (NH), among others.

Combine this with the strategy of Rahm Emanuel (chair of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, who took the House by getting lots of conservatives to run as Democrats.  Such newly-elected DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) as Brad Ellsworth (IN), Joe Donnelly (IN), and Heath Shuler ran on a clear anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and anti-illegal immigration message.

More DINOs and fewer RINOs in Congress will indeed offer marvelous opportunities for “triangulating” the exploitable differences between Blue Dogs, Hillary opportunists, and Pelosi leftists.  Thanks, Erik!

Now let’s take this struggle in a different direction.  We need to take it to the courts just like the liberals have, where they have achieved so many victories nullifying laws passed by Congress and referenda passed by voters.

The electoral catastrophe of November 7 offers the opportunity for conservatives to return to fundamental constitutional principles.  These can be summed up in two words:  enumerated powers.

A Republican Congress was unable to restrain spending on handouts and goodies demanded by its constituents because there is no Constitutional brake on federal spending.  Yet the legal fact is that some 80% of federal programs, agencies, and departments are unconstitutional, because there is no specific “enumerated” authorization for them.

The Constitution is addressed to the federal government.  Its purpose was to specify – to enumerate – what the new government was permitted to do.  The basic principle of the Constitution is:  the government can only do what it is specifically authorized to do.  If there is no enumerated authorization to do X, then it is illegal, unconstitutional, for the government to do X.

There is no Constitutional authority – no enumerated power – for the federal government to have a Department of Energy, a Department of Education, or Environmental Protection Agency.  Every dollar they spend, every regulation they enforce, their entire existence as a whole, is illegal and unconstitutional.

If folks want such things to be legal, then they must get a Constitutional Amendment passed.

So here’s a thought experiment.  Let’s imagine that one-quarter of the money donated to politicians’ campaigns this year ($250 million out of $1 billion) were donated instead to thousands of legal challenges to the constitutionality of federal programs and regulations, conducted by dozens of top-rate conservative law firms.

Let’s imagine that this is kept up year after year, a relentless, unceasing challenge based on the enumerated powers argument.  It would not take long before judges stopped dismissing the argument, then paid serious attention to it, then started enforcing it.  And it would not take that long before a great deal of the public understood the argument, and ultimately agreed with it.

Be thinking about this thought experiment this week, as next week we’ll have an article by a constitutional lawyer fleshing it out.

Every disaster presents fresh opportunities.  We just need to recognize and exploit them.  A Luta Continua – the struggle for freedom and America must always continue.

— Dr. Jack Wheeler is editor-in-chief of To The Point News and is widely credited as the architect of the Reagan Doctrine.