PINE BLUFFS-Those who follow current events closely have seen certain emerging trends which point to a possible resurgence underway for conservatives. That, if true, will help Republicans in November 2008. I’ll explain, but first some bad news for Republicans.

Senator Trent Lott’s (R-MS) announcement that he will resign “to pursue other opportunities,” brings to six the number of Republican senators who will not return in January 2009. The others are Wayne Allard (R-CO), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chuck Hegal (R-NE), John Warner R-VA), and Larry Craig(R-ID). All are in competitive states and their departure gives Democrats a decided advantage in next year’s elections, when Republicans will be compelled to defend 23 seats, while Democrats only need to defend 12. Bad news? Yes and no. 

Fundraising is also a huge concern for the Republican Party. At a time when many major corporations report large gains - Apple’s recent quarterly profits jumped 67%; Merck, which just offered to settle all Vioxx claims for $4.85 billion, developed a vaccine for cervical cancer and a new medicine for diabetes, tallied a 62% gain; McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Caterpillar, Honeywell, and 3M all reported strong earnings - contributions to the Republican Party are way down. With just under a year to go in the presidential campaign, Republicans are losing the fundraising wars big time.

Senator John Ensign (R-NV), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in his November 12, 2007 fundraising letter: “Republican Senate candidates are fighting for their lives against the most well-funded, aggressive Democrat attack campaign in history.” He expects the AFL-CIO to spend $200 million during the 2008 elections, almost exclusively to benefit Democrats.

Yes, the difference between money the Democrat presidential candidates have raised and funds the Republican candidates have collected, is striking. Rudy Giuliani leads all Republicans with $17 million, while Democrat Barrack Obama has raised twice that much.  If this state of affairs continues, the Republican presidential primary winner will face significant campaign problems, as will Republican candidates nationwide. But will it? I think not, because at least 10 recent events point to a conservative resurgence across America.

First, retirement of “moderate” (read liberal) Republicans Hegal and Warner is surely a blessing in disguise. They’ve seldom, if ever, helped further conservative policies in the Senate, and replacements will benefit the conservative cause. 

          Second, Lott, 66, presently the House Minority Whip, relished the wrangling over votes that went with his job, but his voting record reveals a vacillation between liberal and conservative positions. Fortunately, Mississippi’s conservative Republican governor Haley Barbour gets to appoint Lott’s temporary successor, who will then have a leg up in the 2008 election to fill out Lott’s unexpired term, which runs through 2012.

          Third, in Virginia, Republicans are urging former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson to run for the seat John Warner will vacate. Olson’s wife Barbara - promising author of the New York Times bestseller, Hell to Pay, an exposé of Hillary Rodham Clinton - was killed on 9/11/. She was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field near Shanksville, a rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania town. Olson would oppose former Democrat governor Mark Warner. “His [Olson’s] political background and high profile in conservative circles would actually make him a national candidate from a fundraising perspective,” a New York based fundraiser said. “He could actually go toe to toe with Warner on the donor front, if he were interested . . .” 

Fourth, over on the House side, when Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), announced on October 29, 2007 that he won’t seek re-election at the end of his current term, he joined several other House Republicans who do not intend to return in January 2009. But just watch this.

Tancredo made his mark by pushing for immigration reform long before the 9/11/ terrorist attack. Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform said of Mr. Tancredo: “He’s been a bellwether of the national mood - kind of a national canary who’s been way ahead of, or foreshadowing the surge in public opinion, and actually helped lead it at critical times. He’s really irreplaceable . . .”

However, Tancredo believes he can now step aside because the immigration issue has gained other champions. He points to massive numbers of voter’s telephone calls and e-mails helping to sink the Senate’s misguided Immigration Reform bill and the so-called Dream Act, other Republican presidential candidates embracing immigration reform as a top priority, and his recent offering of an amendment on the House floor removing federal funding from sanctuary cities that protect illegal aliens. Democrats accepted the amendment without objection, and Tancredo said: “I just figure how many more signs do I need that I’ve done what I set out to do. . . . I remember the first time I did it, I got [only] 82 votes. That’s what has changed in the Congress.” See the trend here?

What’s in his future? He doesn’t know yet. One option might be to troll for a vice-presidential nomination by one of the Republican front-runners next year. Another would be to challenge liberal Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) who comes up for re-election in 2010. Tancredo’s only 61. I hope he opts for the latter.

Fifth, regarding changes in Congress, Tancredo is correct. Another emerging trend is this: on October 24, after almost drowning in telegrams, e-mails, and phone calls from constituents, a divided Senate voted 54-44 to kill the misguided Dream Act - which would have legalized illegal alien students by giving them conditional green cards and an eventual path to citizenship. That’s 8 votes less than the 60 needed for cloture, to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. More and more Senate Republicans, who finally seem to “get it” regarding illegal immigration, argue that no immigration bill should pass until the federal government first seals our porous borders and begins stricter enforcement of laws against employers who hire illegals.

In fact, sealing the southern border should be among the highest of priorities, since the Mexican government has little problem with its citizens crossing that border by the millions. John McCaslin, in his Inside the Beltway column of November 5, 2007, wrote: “. . . Increasing the number of Mexicans working illegally in America is among Mexico’s highest foreign policy objectives.”

Sixth, although enthusiasm for Democrats in the contributions area does seem to be running high, this contradicts nationwide polls, which show that enthusiasm among the general populace for the Democrat-led Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), has waned considerably. Reid’s plight reminds of Tom Daschle (D-SD) two years ago, just before he was turned out of office by his conservative constituents, whom he’d been trying to fool for years.

Seventh, Reid’s troubles in his home state of Nevada, where his popularity has sunk to an all time low - he’s viewed favorably by only 32%, and unfavorably by 51% - mirror what appears to be nationwide dissatisfaction with policies pursued by vindictive  Congressional Democrats who seem more interested in attacking George W. Bush than in addressing America’s problems. According to a mid-November Gallup poll, just 14% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress. I’ve actually seen a recent poll placing Congressional approval as low as 13%.

Eighth, while the rest of us focused on presidential primary politics, on October 20, Louisiana elected a Republican governor. Conservative Bobby Jindal, the first American Indian to ever hold that office, won handily with 54% of the vote. In the process Louisiana voters booted from office the incompetent former Democrat chief executive, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who sought to cover her own mistakes by laying all the blame for Hurricane Katrina response and recovery failures on the Bush Administration.

Ninth, as liberal leftists and other crazies in the Democrat Party attack their own leaders and try to convince them that the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq now, Bill O’Reilly reports that Americans appear to be staying away in droves from the recent spate of anti-American, anti-Bush, anti-war films such as Rendition, Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, and No End in Sight, all “dishonest propaganda films,” according to O’Reilly. Here’s a trend I hope continues.

Finally, just five weeks after New York’s Democrat governor Elliott Spitzer, displaying the arrogance for which liberals are noted, set off a major political immigration battle by ordering state officials to issue driver’s licenses to illegals, he was forced to back down. The issue put him at odds with not only New Yorkers, but also New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson, former Navy Secretary John Lehman who served on the 9/11/ Commission, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and New York State’s Republican Legislature. After meeting with New York’s Democrat congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. which undoubtedly urged him to shelve the plan because of the heat they were taking both at home and nationally, he scrapped his idea. “You don’t need a stethoscope to hear the heartbeat of the public on this,” he said. Or Hillary’s either, he might have added.     

These polls and current events seem to indicate a mood swing already in progress among the nation’s voters. But for Republicans to win in 2008, they must return to their conservative roots; at the core are less government, a strong national defense, and lower taxes. A strategy for long-term economic growth, tax cuts for middle income families, effective limits on government domestic spending, a renewed commitment to deregulation and a strong  military, and continued improvement in intelligence budgets, are all part of it.

Admittedly, it will be an uphill battle, but with a bit under a year left to go, it can and must be done. The socialist, hate America alternatives offered by liberal Democrats are unthinkable.

   Anthony J. Sacco, a writer, licensed private investigator, author of two novels; The China Connection, and Little Sister Lost, and a biography, Echoes in the Wind, holds degrees from Loyola College of Maryland and the University of Maryland Law School. His articles have appeared in the Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Voices for the Unborn, the Catholic Review, WREN Magazine and the Wyoming Catholic Register. E-mail him at anthonyjsacco@hotmail.com and visit his website at www.saccoservices.com. To read an exerpt from his latest book, Echoes in the Wind, go to http://www.saccoservices.com/echoesinthewind.php. 

PINE BLUFFS - It’s no secret. There’s a concerted attempt to ban Christmas from the American scene. And it’s not a new movement, either. Who’s behind it? The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its like-minded allies, at least some federal courts staffed by liberal judges, and even, to some extent, the Justice Department.

        Attempting to remove Christmas from the public forum has become almost a full time job for the ACLU, America’s leading censor of religious liberty, and others of its ilk. While denying that there’s any prior restraint on public celebrations, “the ACLU is constantly in court fighting ‘unacceptable’ public Christmas celebrations from the previous year or planning to attack next season’s festivities,” says Bill O’Reilly of the O’Reilly Factor. They work “. . . relentlessly all year toward their ultimate goal of eliminating virtually every public mention of Christ or Christianity from the country’s most popular holiday.”[1] And it is the country’s most popular holiday, according to a Fox News opinion poll[2] which found that 95% of Americans celebrate it.

        But the primarily Christian connection to Christmas provides ACLU lawyers with a target-rich setting. Each Christmas season, they and other ACLU activists travel the highways and byways hunting for . . . “public nativity scenes, religious ornaments and displays, Christmas carols, public prayers, biblical references, or any other ‘offensive’ form of free expression that violates their bizarre interpretation of the establishment clause of our Constitution, otherwise known as the doctrine of ‘separation of church and state,’ says O’Reilly.[3]

        Why? Because, according to O’Reilly, “the ACLU’s efforts are part of a larger mission to erase from America’s national public memory our heritage of faith and religious freedom.”[4]
 

Some federal courts have also become part of the attack on our Nation’s favorite holiday. According to an article on the Catholic Exchange’s website,[5] a sharply divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled that it is constitutionally permissible for New York City public schools [the largest school system in the nation, with over a million kids enrolled in its twelve hundred schools] to ban displays of Christian nativity scenes during Christmas, while permitting displays of the Jewish menorah and the Islamic star and crescent during Hanukkah and Ramadan.

          This trend has been apparent for some time, and not just in the United States. In November 1998, the City Council in the English midlands city of Birmingham drew a firestorm of criticism when it attempted to rename the Christmas holiday “Winterval.”[6] Although a spokesman denied that doing so would detract from the celebration of Christmas, a representative of the Catholic Church told the Catholic Times newspaper in response, that Christmas had already become too secular. “Christmas is one of the major festivals of the Christian year and so the challenge to Christians is to reflect that,” Tom Horwood of the London-based Catholic Media Office said.

And Anglican Bishop Mark Santor called the idea of Winterval “. . . madness. No doubt it was a well-meaning attempt not to offend, not to exclude, not to say anything at all,” he remarked.
  

A leading member of England’s Muslim community, Majid Katme, coordinator of the London-based Islamic Concern Organization, seems to have had a grasp of the issue. “This is supposed to be a Christian country,” he said. “They [Christians] should have the right follow their own traditions. We need to understand the true meaning of the festival [of Christmas], why it is celebrated and what it means. Muslims have their own celebrations, and I wouldn’t make them more general so that everyone else can join in, so I don’t see why Christians should.”

        The absurdity of the situation is clear when occupants of the White house can use taxpayer dollars to celebrate Christmas, but similar celebrations in public institutions by ordinary citizens are prohibited.

        The ACLU does not have the field all to itself. Its efforts have not gone unopposed. In 1994, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), based in Scottsdale, AZ, was launched by Dr. James Dobson, recently deceased D. James Kennedy, the late Dr. Bill Wright and the late Larry Burkett. Its mission? To defend the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy training, funding, and litigation. 

        Heading up the ADF is Alan Sears, formerly a highly regarded U.S. Justice Department prosecutor who also served as executive director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under former President Ronald Reagan. Sears launched the ADF’s Christmas project in 2003, seeking to eliminate confusion regarding our rights to publicly celebrate Christmas, to protect those rights from the ACLU and its allies, and to reverse the gains anti-Christian groups have made in the three decades-long war against Christmas and faith. It has vigorously implemented that project since, reminding government officials, business leaders, and public school administrators that it’s okay to say “Merry Christmas,” even in the public square.

        “The ACLU and its allies have convinced countless Americans, including public officials and even many Christians, that [they] cannot use Christian language, history or symbols in public, especially in public schools or on public property. That’s why the battle for Christmas is so important,” he said. “The truth is that the Supreme Court has never ruled that public schools must ban appropriate religious expression, including the singing of religious Christmas carols or even nativity scenes.”
 

The ADF has had significant successes. Its National Legal Educational Materials effort resulted in distribution of packets on the legality of Christmas religious expression to 11,000 school districts and national educational organizations in 2005, reaching 68,000 schools in 27 states. Not stopping there, it launched its National Legal Education Media campaign, reaching out to the public through mass media, with appearances on ABC’s World News Tonight, Fox News, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, the O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes, and numerous talk radio venues. But perhaps its most effective tactic has been its National Legal Resource/Action Blitz, which is designed to equip people across the country to oppose, challenge and prevail against instances of blatant religious discrimination. In many places, this involves recruiting and training lawyers to challenge ACLU-inspired school officials’ actions in court.

          “The thrill of Christmas lies not in the objects, nor even in the senses it arouses,” said Father Thomas J. Mc Sweeney, a former director of the Christophers, an organization rooted in Judea-Christian service to God and humanity. “Rather it is within the heart if it’s open; in the eyes, if they are lifted up; in the ears if they are intensely alert.”

        Thinking back over all my Christmases, beginning from the time I was three or four years old, the happy memories and the disappointing, sad or painful ones, I understand that they all helped make me who I am. So has the very first one. My favorite carol is a reminder of that milestone in human history:

          “O holy night,

          The stars are brightly shining.

          It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.

          A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,

          For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

         Reprinted from the Wyoming Catholic Register, May 16, 2007      

                        ________

PINE BLUFFS - For centuries the Holy See, also known as Vatican City, has effectively conducted foreign relations with other countries. Under John Paul II, and now under Benedict XVI, diplomacy has continued.

It’s to diplomacy that Vatican City owes its very existence. In the mid 19^th Century, when Garibaldi united the Italian city-states - including Rome in 1870 - many Papal holdings were seized. That situation prevailed until disputes between several popes and the Italian government were diplomatically resolved in 1929, by the Lateran Treaties.

Vatican City, a landlocked sovereign city-state consisting of a walled area within the limits of Rome, is not quite as large as The Mall in Washington, D.C. With an annual budget of $247 million, and a geographical area of 108.7 acres, it’s the smallest independent nation on the globe. A token army of approximately 100 men is recruited from Catholic male Swiss citizens, who function as the Pope’s personal bodyguards.

Because of its insignificant size, worldwide influence by the Vatican’s ecclesiastical government, headed since April 19, 2005 by Chief of State Pope Benedict XVI, is astonishing. Vatican power does not come from armed might – it has no missiles, military aircraft, ships, or tanks – but from its moral influence over the world’s approximately 1 billion Roman Catholics.

For almost 2 millennia, the Catholic Church has been a significant force shaping and defining Europe and the West. Under secular attack during all recent major socio-political movements, the Renaissance, Reformation, French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, communism, and fascism, the Church has assumed a counter-cultural stance. Yet it has survived and even prospered.

Lately the world entered another critical historical period precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the reunification of Western and Eastern Europe for the first time since 1945, when Soviet armies entered Berlin and imposed an authoritarian will upon half an exhausted continent.

A keen student of history, John Paul II’s foreign policy consisted of initiating worldwide papal contact; 129 trips to 104 different countries in support of world peace, human rights and conservative dogma. In 1991 his papal encyclical, Centesimus annus, presented a distinct Catholic concept of a just social order for the new Europe and the new world. Only 58 when elected, this first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Adrian VI (1522-23) diligently pursued Vatican foreign policy objectives.

Will the Holy See’s foreign policy change under Benedict XVI? To fully answer, look to Benedict’s emphasis and interests, first as a Cardinal, and now as Pope. As Cardinal Ratzinger, his efforts focused on the Church internally - on doctrinal, theological and liturgical issues. After April 2005, his energies continued in those areas, but also expanded to include the future role Catholicism will play on the world scene.
        Today, papal policy concerns embrace religious freedom, international development, the Middle East, South America, terrorism, interreligious dialogue and reconciliation, and the application of Church doctrine in an era of rapid change. 
        In just two years, Benedict XVI has begun ecumenical efforts toward reunification with Eastern Orthodox Churches. That, due to its huge geopolitical implications throughout Eurasia, will continue. His expressed concern over recent European secularization and a spreading relativism will lead him to confront the “dictatorship of relativism” in the West. Because of his deep respect for Judaism, efforts toward healing the Jewish-Christian rift will likely persist. And because he’s somewhat cooler toward Islam than was John Paul, he has adopted a more cautious attitude toward Muslims. 
       Benedict, who recently celebrated his 80^th birthday, is healthy and vigorous. With trips to Turkey and Germany completed, he has embarked on a visit to Brazil. However, don’t look for him to match his predecessor’s torrid globetrotting pace. Other ways exist to increase papal policy influence on the international scene, such as inviting heads of state to visit him in Rome. Benedict has already confirmed this tack: he has received President Mahinda Rajapaksa, of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, requesting that he respect human rights; he hosted the former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami on May 4^th, and will see President George W. Bush in early June. Khatami, a strong supporter of the Pope’s recent Turkey visit, seeks to promote a much-needed dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Bush met Cardinal Ratzinger at John Paul II’s funeral in 2005. They’ll discuss the Vatican’s developing relationships with the Peoples Republics of China and Vietnam, worldwide terrorism, and other common interests.

Anthony J. Sacco, Sr. a writer, author of two novels, The China Connection, Little Sister Lost, and a biography, Echoes in the Wind, is a licensed private investigator who owns and operates Mutual Investigative Services. Dr. Sacco holds degrees from Loyola College and the University of Maryland Law School. E-mail him at www.anthonyjsacco@hotmail.com and visit his website at www.saccoservices.com.  To read an exerpt from his latest book, Echoes in the Wind, go to http://www.saccoservices.com/echoesinthewind.php.