Hard Starboard

Ladies and gentlemen, we have found our answer to Barack Obama.

I can envision the presidential race in 2016 or 2020 being between the Democrat senator-in-waiting from Illinois and the current Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, Michael Steele. And the first shot in that race was fired Tuesday night when Steele opened his speech with this:

I had planned to give a moving defense of the conservative principles of the Republican Party tonight. But there was only one problem; Barak bama gave it last month at the Democratic convention.

Whoever wins the GOP nomination in 2008 could do a lot worse than tapping this man to be his running mate, mark my words. The many reasons why follow.

We have come an incredibly long way since the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. We have come a long way since another Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, sent the National Guard into Little Rock to open the school doors to black and white children alike.
And we have come even further since a majority of Republicans in the United States Senate fought off the segregationist Democrats to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Never mind climbing the wall, I think some NAACP heads must have burst like the victims in the movie Scanners.

What truly defines the civil rights challenge today isn't whether you can get a seat at the lunch counter. It's whether you can own that lunch counter in order to create legacy wealth for your children.

We heard one word over and over again at the Democratic convention: hope. But there is a problem, my friends: Hope is not a strategy. Hope doesn't protect you from terrorists. Hope doesn't lower your taxes. Hope doesn't help you buy a home. And hope doesn't ensure quality education for your kids.

Good intentions and fifty cents – okay, a couple of bucks (I don’t drink coffee, and it shows…) - IOW, will buy you a cup of coffee. Fabulous.

And how’s this for an exclamation point?

As the Book of James reminds us: ‘It is not enough just to have faith. Faith that does not show itself by good deeds is no faith at all.’ You see, it's results that matter, and President Bush does not just talk about hope; he stands on a record of putting hope into action for America.

He invoked {gasp} The Bible. He mixed religion and politics! No fair, only Jesse Jackson gets to do that!

President Bush knows that a competitive marketplace will require providing our children with a first-rate education. He knows that too many of our children are headed for the state pen instead of Penn State.

What’s that McDonald’s jingle? “I’m lovin’ it…”

And then it was John Kerry’s turn in the proverbial barrel again.

He also recently said that he doesn't want to use the word ‘war’ to describe our efforts to fight terrorism. Well, I don't want to use the words ‘commander in chief’ to describe John Kerry.

Bam!

Just a year after the first attack on the World Trade Center, most Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats rejected an amendment to slash our intelligence budget by $6 billion. But not John Kerry. It was his amendment.

Pow!

Most Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats voted to give our combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan the funding necessary for things like body armor. But not John Kerry.

Biff!

When Vice President Gore urged the Senate to ‘reinvent government’ and reduce the federal workforce, most Republicans and Democrats voted for it. But not John Kerry.

Sock! (Hey, was that a positive mention of Fat Albert at a Republican convention? My, how he’s fallen…)

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate voted to reform the product liability system that was making trial lawyers rich while causing playgrounds and small businesses to close. But not John Kerry.

Whack!

Most senators in both parties voted to protect the institution of marriage with the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Clinton. But not John Kerry.

Paff!