From studying American political history, it seems as if liberals have a secret playbook and have been using it from the early days of the Republic, handing it down to each succeeding generation.

Liberals seem to know exactly what to do when any situation arises and history is full of interesting parallels.

1.  Use the Cover of a Crisis to Implement Your Agenda and Smash Your Political Enemies.

America’s first political party, the Federalists, the Party of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams, led the nation from 1789 to 1801, a period of twelve years that included control of the presidency and both houses of Congress.

The liberal party of its day, Federalist lawmakers imposed a wide variety of direct taxes upon the people, centralized the banking system, and ran rough shod over the new Bill of Rights with their crown jewel – the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

With a quasi-war brewing with France, and with the hysteria it was causing, these acts were supposedly enacted to help secure and protect the homeland.  But the left has long used deceit to hide their true intentions, particularly during a crisis.  The real target was Thomas Jefferson’s Republican opposition.

The Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four bills, three of which were specifically designed to weaken the Jeffersonians.

The Naturalization Act raised the period of residence required for citizenship from five years to fourteen years.  The reason for this was quite simple – a majority of new immigrants from Europe were joining the Republicans.

The Alien Act authorized the president to summarily deport any aliens, regardless of country, that he deemed dangerous “to the peace and safety” of the United States.  Under the act, aliens would not receive a jury trial and the president was not required to explain or justify his decision.  Jefferson considered the bill “worthy of the eighth or ninth century.”  Like the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act was one of pure political partisanship.

The most controversial was the Sedition Act.  It provided fines of up to $2,000 and jail sentences of up to two years for anyone who publicly criticized the president, members of Congress, or other administration officials, by publishing “false, scandalous and malicious” accusations.  It was a clear violation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, taking aim at Republican newspapers, which were springing up all over the nation.

After the Senate passed the Sedition Act, ironically on July 4, 1798, Federalist leaders toasted the president:  “John Adams.  May he, like Samson, slay thousands of Frenchmen with the jawbone of Jefferson.”

Under this act, a number of Jeffersonian newspaper editors were charged with sedition, and those brought to trial were convicted, fined, and sent to prison.

Congress also established sunset provisions for most of these new laws, allowing them to expire just after the 1800 elections when Adams would have secured a second term.  If Federalists retained power, those laws would no longer be necessary.  This shows the level of politics attached to the new acts.

But despite administration efforts to maintain power, the people rose up against what Jefferson called “a reign of witches,” and ousted the Federalist Party from the White House and both Houses of Congress.  The party never again held power.

FDR used the Great Depression to “reform” capitalism with a litany of new government programs and newly discovered powers.  The social welfare state we now live in was born in the 1930s.

And as we well recall, Obama’s former chief of staff, now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, famously said during the economic panic, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”  This is liberal thinking in its finest.  They simply cannot express what they really want to do so they use a crisis as a way to pass laws they know the people will not support, like massive bank bailouts, stimulus spending packages, and financial regulatory bills to take more control over the nation’s economy.

But we must always remember what James Madison once said, “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.”

2.  When You Can’t Legislate Your Agenda, Use the Judiciary to Impose It.

Though the Federalists were routed in the 1800 elections, they were not down and out, but had one last trick up their sleeve – impose their agenda by judicial fiat, which is why liberals insist on a strong court system.

To keep Federalist policies in place, President Adams, in his last days in the White House, appointed a wealth of Federalist judges in the many new courts the out-going Federalist-controlled Congress hastily created.  They became known as Adams’ “midnight judges,” most of whom were named during the last night he resided in the Executive Mansion.

Adams also appointed John Marshall to the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court, a fierce proponent of nationalism.  Marshall used judicial power to solidify the Federalist agenda of centralizing power in Washington.  He never found a federal right he did not like.

Jefferson and Republicans in Congress fought hard to undue the Federalist-dominated judiciary with some success, but were unable to overturn it completely.

And for that, we have been living with a left-of-center judiciary nearly every step of the way.  The courts have imposed abortion rights, stripped prayer from schools, expanded eminent domain, limited property rights, interfered in state affairs, and generally caused mayhem, all in the name of liberalism.

3.  Smear, Slander, and Shame Your Enemies, Especially to Guard the All Important Supreme Court.

When it comes to conservative judges, especially for justices of the Supreme Court, liberals have vilified them in vicious personal attacks and smear campaigns in the hopes of protecting the one branch of government not subject to popular sovereignty.  By keeping the Court left of center, liberals can write laws from the bench and implement their unpopular policy goals with no opposition.

But to do that they must maintain control of the court system, especially the High Court, at all costs.

In 1888, in an effort to help end sectional tensions, President Grover Cleveland appointed Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi to an associate position on the United States Supreme Court.

Congressional liberals, mainly from the North, attacked Lamar, not as a Southerner, which they hated, but as “unqualified” to sit on the High Court.  One Massachusetts Senator opposed Lamar “not because I doubted his eminent integrity and ability, but because I thought that he had little professional experience and no judicial experience.”

The San Francisco Chronicle believed Lamar leaned “naturally and spontaneously to the side of the strong against the weak.  He is a friend of monopolies.”

The name Bork, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito could have been substituted for Lamar with little difference.  The attacks against conservative nominees to the Court have been nothing short of vicious.  And the left says it’s the right that is “mean spirited.”

4.  Use Deceit to Mask Your Real Intentions.

Liberals have always been disingenuous about their real goals.

In the 1890s, the left sought to implement an inflationary monetary policy based on the free and unlimited coinage of silver.  The nation was on the gold standard, but liberals wanted to inflate the currency supply with cheaper paper money and silver coins.  They claimed to want a system of bi-metallism, allowing both gold and silver to circulate, but in reality sought to replace gold, the money of the bankers they claimed, with silver, money for the poor.

Inflation, they contended, would help the poor, especially the nation’s farmers, who were in perpetual debt.  Inflating the currency with cheaper dollars would make it easier to pay those debts.

But Gresham’s Law states that “bad money drives good money out of circulation.”  This economic rule would allow the left to get what it wanted without actually having to legislate it.

They could not advocate a silver standard, so they sought a sneaky way to implement it.  If enough silver entered circulation, Gresham’s Law would kick in, eventually driving out gold, because people would hoard it, and the nation would be placed on a silver standard.

The plan failed, however, because the people did not want it and the gold standard was saved at the ballot box by electing a string of gold standard presidents.

Does this tactic sound familiar?

The Obama-Reid-Pelosi Administration did exactly the same thing with the 2010 Health Care Bill.  They wanted a “single payer” government run system but could not get it passed, so they instituted a “public option” in the name of “competition.”

But no private insurance company can ever hope to compete with the government, which does not have to worry about making a profit and can always draw from the public trough to make up any shortfalls.

Knowing full well that any government system would spike health insurance costs, Democrats hope that businesses will be forced, out of necessity, to drop their increasingly expensive private plans in favor of the cheaper public option, eventually placing the country under a “single payer” health care system.

Liberal Democrats claim they are against monopolies and the big insurance companies, which are supposedly in the pockets of the Republicans.  But it was conservatives who sought to end the state monopolies for health insurance companies, forcing them to compete nation-wide, a move that would dramatically lower the cost of premiums.  The left, as well as the insurance companies, have fought this idea tooth and nail.

So who really favors monopolies and the insurance companies?

5.  When All Else Fails, Use Class Warfare and Denigrate the Rich.

Democrats used a similar strategy of deceit to kill the flat tax proposal but eventually pulled out one of their oldest cards to finish it off – the Class Card.

The federal tax code is so dense and cumbersome that members of the House Ways and Means Committee do not even understand it, nor does the IRS.

One conservative plan is the flat tax, which would abolish the entire code and implement one flat rate for everyone.  Gone would be the thick and burdensome forms, to be replaced by a simple index card, whether for a business or an individual.  Wherever this plan has been enacted, the economy has soared.

Democrats immediately pounced on the idea as a sop to the rich.  But is it?

The plan gives generous personal exemptions for families and children.  For instance, under one proposal each adult would get a personal tax exemption of $17,500 and $5,000 per child.  The tax rate would be 17 percent.

So let’s look at two families, each with two parents and two children.

Family A makes $50,000 a year.  The exemptions would total $45,000 ($17,500 for each parent and $5,000 per child), meaning no tax would be assessed on that amount.  So Family A would pay 17 percent of the remaining $5,000 for a total tax bill of $850, much less than they are paying now.  If they added another child, the tax bill would fall to zero.

Family B makes $1,000,000 a year.  But they receive the same exemption of $45,000, meaning they pay 17 percent of the remaining $955,000 for a total tax bill of $162,350.  If they added another child, their tax bill would only fall to $161,500.

So who really benefits from this plan and who are Democrats actually protecting?

Liberals, even though they condemn Wall Street and the “rich,” have been among their strongest backers.  Remember, it was mostly conservative Republicans who fiercely opposed the bank bailouts and liberal Democrats who wanted to make the package larger.

These are just a few examples to demonstrate how liberals have been sticking to the script for more than 200 years.  They use tried-and-true methods because the right falls for it every time.  But Sun Tzu’s rule, “Know Your Enemy,” should be on the mind of every conservative when it comes to liberals and their playbook, and a working knowledge of American political history will provide that knowledge.

Presidents today are seen, not as statesmen, but as celebrities.   All too often we elect leaders based on style, personality, and even looks, but not on qualities that really matter.  And with that, our presidents act accordingly, not like the chief executive of a republic but more in the role of a monarch.

This was evident from the beginning.  George Washington, the Father of the Country, could have, had he desired it, become king of the new nation.  He had that kind of popularity.  Fortunately for America, he also had a wealth of integrity and would not assume any such position for himself.

But Washington did place himself high above the people when we served as the nation’s first president.

He dressed extravagantly for his inauguration and arrived at the ceremony in an elaborate carriage pulled by a team of six white horses, the fancy limousine of its day.  As president, he even refused to shake hands with people, preferring instead to bow.

John Adams loved the idea of being president and, along with Alexander Hamilton, desired the office to be like that of a king.  He arrived at his inaugural in a fancy, horse-drawn carriage and wearing a lavish ceremonial sword and cockade, along with a powdered wig.

Adams even wanted to give the president an elaborate title, “His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties.”  But Congress wisely rejected it.

When Thomas Jefferson became the third president in the election of 1800, he set out to change it all.  He feared the presidency was already becoming like a monarchy.

On inauguration day, he would not be driven to his ceremony in a carriage, but instead chose to walk from his boarding room to the Capitol.  He wore a simple suit and what he termed “republican” shoes, which did not have a buckle, considered aristocratic in his day, but laced instead.

As president, Jefferson refused to deliver the State of the Union message to Congress, preferring to send a written copy instead, because he felt the practice of a public speech resembled the King of England’s address to Parliament to open its sessions.

Jefferson had no servants to speak of in the White House, preferring to answer the front door himself, no matter what he was wearing at the time.  He dressed in plain suits and served food and wine to his guests rather than having a servant do it.  He also took out the rectangular dining table in favor of a circular one, so all who dined would seemingly be equal.  Jefferson always wanted to be seen as a man of the people.

After the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, the great hero throughout the North, won the presidency in 1868.  He loved the pomp and pageantry of the presidency, bringing back much of its grandeur.  He owned an extravagant carriage, palled around with the rich and famous, and vacationed in fancy resorts.  He loved it so much that he earnestly desired a third term but could not get it, mainly because his two-term administration was thoroughly corrupt.  Had he been allowed to continue in office, it is quite likely he would have remained until the day he died, just as FDR did.

Chester A. Arthur, who served as president from 1881 to 1885, was even worse than Grant.  Arthur was a dandy who loved the finer things in life and was not shy about it either.  He loved nothing more than shopping for new clothes.  He wore the latest fashions, perfumed his aristocratic whiskers, and sported expensive jewelry, a top hat and cane.  After winning the vice presidency, he went on an elaborate spending spree at Brooks Brothers, purchasing over $700 on new suits, a massive amount of money in the 1880s.

When he arrived in the Executive Mansion, Arthur was disgusted with what he found and almost refused to live there.  To bring the White House up to his standards, he spent lavishly on new furniture and decorations for the home.  He added valets, butlers, a French chef, and other servants befitting his notion of a head of state.

Mrs. James G. Blaine dined one evening with President Arthur, writing later that the “dinner was extremely elegant,” with “hardly a trace of the old White House taint being perceptible anywhere.”  The “flowers, the silver, the attendants, all showing the latest style…in expense and taste.”

Grover Cleveland, a Jeffersonian Democrat, sought to bring back a degree of simplicity to the White House when he assumed the presidency from Arthur in 1885.

Cleveland did not like what he called the “purely ornamental part of the office.”  He personally did not like luxuries, but especially while serving the people.  He particularly detested lavish parties and gatherings.  He got rid of all the servants Arthur had hired, as well as the chef.

Once, when invited to the ballpark to attend a baseball game, he politely turned down the offer, telling the team’s manager, “What do you think the American people would think of me if I wasted my time going to a ball game?”

Oh how we need such a man in the Oval Office today.

But instead we have President Barack Obama, who has taken the concept of the “celebrity president” to new heights.

The entirety of his 2008 campaign, as well as his short stint in the White House thus far, is a testament to this irrefutable fact.

To gain the presidency, Obama spent lavishly and raised a record $745 million.  According to a report out last week, Obama is laying plans for a $1 billion re-election campaign in 2012.  This is more than obscene.  It’s downright repulsive.  Anyone who would spend that kind of money has no business occupying the nation’s highest and noblest office.

While president, Obama has also spent extravagantly on fancy parties and gatherings.  His inauguration alone cost $170 million.

Within three weeks of entering the White House, Obama threw an expensive cocktail party in which Wagyu steak was served, a Japanese variety costing $125 per pound.  It’s one of the most expensive steaks in the world.

Entertainers such as Jennifer Lopez, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennett, Martina McBride, Alison Kraus, Brad Paisley, Charley Pride, Seal, Sheryl Crow, Smokey Robinson, and John Legend, just to name a few, have preformed for the First Couple.  The White House also put on a Fiesta Latina night.

He has also thrown two lavish Super Bowl parties, serving food the First Lady has preached that we should not eat – bratwurst, cheeseburgers, deep dish pizza, buffalo wings, twice baked potatoes, ice cream, and beer, all at his latest bash.

Obama also broke the record for first-year president in foreign travel, visiting 20 nations.  By the end of his second year, he had spent a total of 58 days in 33 foreign countries, another record.

While the nation has been in an economic crisis, and is now dealing with a crisis in the Middle East, Obama recently took his 60^th golf outing this past weekend, already more than the entire eight years of George W. Bush, who took a beating in the media for any trips to the links.

It was also announced recently that the Obamas fly in a personal trainer from Chicago every week to keep the family in top shape.

All of this while the unemployment rate climbed above 10 percent.

According to Nile Gardiner, of the London Telegraph, the Obama administration “resembles a modern Ancien Regime,” the corrupt, party-driven reign of Louis XVI that led to the French Revolution.

What we need is the return of a little Jeffersonian simplicity in the White House and elect a president unconcerned about his image or entertaining himself.  The 45^th President of the United States should be more concerned about the great problems facing the nation.  We need a man of the people, not a king.

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain once said, “but it does rhyme.”

People choose a variety of ways in which to view current events.  In the stark reality of modern politics, it’s typical to see any situation through the lens of a strict political ideology, a particular religious creed, or even one’s party affiliation.

But for true conservatives, current events should be viewed through the prism of history.  As Pat Buchanan has written, “conservatism is grounded in the past.  Its principles are derived from the Constitution, experience, history, tradition, custom, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us – ‘the best that has been thought and said.’  It does not purport to know the future.  It is about preserving the true, the good, the beautiful.”

With the 2010 midterm election over, the focus can now shift to 2012, a critical presidential election for the future of the country.

Seeing Obama in light of recent presidential electoral history, the conclusion can be drawn that he will be ousted in 2012 and the nation placed on a better course, if the Republican Party follows the historical model and plays its cards wisely.

By examining presidential elections in the 48 years from 1960 until 2008, we find a similar pattern emerging:

1961-1969 – JFK-LBJ          –  (D)  –   1993-2001 – Clinton

1969-1977 – Nixon-Ford     –  (R)  –   2001-2009  – Bush II

1977-1981 – Carter              –  (D)  –   2009-2013 – Obama

1981-1989 – Reagan          –  (R)  –                   ?

In 1961, the youthful, handsome John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency from the aged Dwight Eisenhower, announcing to the nation “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”  Kennedy was the first president born in the 20^th century and the youngest ever elected.  Over the course of eight years, he and Lyndon Johnson embarked on an ambitious, leftwing agenda that saw the size and scope of government grow as it had not since the days of FDR.

Seen by many as a flaming liberal, Kennedy at least had some conservative ideas, such as an income tax cut to keep the economy humming and a strong national security policy, making him seem less progressive today.  While in the Senate, Kennedy had the temerity to harshly criticize President Eisenhower for cutting defense spending, the famous “missile gap,” and vowed to restore it once in the White House.  He flexed his military muscle in Cuba and again in Vietnam, pledging to take a strong stand against the monolithic nature of communism in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Though civil rights legislation may be taken for granted today, in the early 1960s it was seen, even by many Northern liberals, as a path to be traveled lightly.  And for JFK, very lightly indeed.  Even though he started out slow, Kennedy eventually ordered thousands of U.S. troops into Oxford, Mississippi to enforce a court order, a radical step that does not comport with the spirit of the Constitution or Posse Comitatus.

When Lyndon Johnson became president in 1963, after Kennedy’s tragic assassination, he sensed that the nation had moved to the left and embarked on a far-reaching agenda that called for stronger civil rights legislation, welfare payments to end poverty, and literacy programs to stem the tide of ignorance.  For it would take a massive government effort to build a great society, Johnson told the country.

While most Americans believe that a great society consists of freedom, individual rights, and capitalism, Johnson thought differently and argued that government, and only government, could provide the means of crafting it.  Vowing that poverty could be wiped out with a few billion dollars, Johnson’s program flopped and poverty is still very much alive, even after pouring trillions of tax dollars into a seemingly infinite number of government programs.  It was the greatest wealth transfer in American history and a miserable failure.

Johnson left the nation weaker than he found it and more divided than it had been in a century.

The disastrous years of Kennedy-Johnson were followed by those of Nixon-Ford, from 1969 to 1977.  As the leader of the “conservative party,” Nixon was no conservative, nor was Jerry Ford.  Campaigning as a conservative and reaching out to the right, Nixon governed as a moderate-to-liberal president.  He gave the country the Environmental Protection Agency, increased welfare payments, wage and price controls, and an economy in stagnation.

In foreign affairs, the war in Vietnam was expanded to Cambodia, and nearly as many Americans died in Southeast Asia under Nixon than Johnson.  Rather than confront Soviet Communism, Nixon, along with Henry Kissinger, fashioned a policy of détente, meant to warm relations between the superpowers.  The policy did nothing but infuriate most conservatives.

After the ravages of Vietnam and its spawn, Watergate, Nixon left the presidency in disgrace.  Ford, though a decent man, made the crucial mistake of pardoning Nixon, which angered many Americans and most certainly killed any hopes of election in his own right.

The U.S. military was in a sad state after Vietnam and America looked pathetically weak to its enemies abroad.  When North Vietnamese communist forces overran the Republic of South Vietnam and U.S. personnel fled Saigon in humiliation, the ineffective Ford did nothing.

With the scandals and ineptness of the Nixon-Ford years, America was ready for a change and looked for something brand new.  And out of Georgia came a common man who had never served in Washington and had very little experience in government.  Jimmy Carter’s slim resume included just two terms in the Georgia state senate and one term as governor, before running for president in 1976.  Playing up his well-crafted image as a man of moral convictions, Carter provided a stark contrast to the corruption of the previous eight years.  In his victory, he returned most of the Solid South, except Virginia, to the Democratic column.

Writes Mike Evans in Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos, “The presidential election was a public sounding board for the much-touted failures of the Republican Party. He ran against a disgraced president and his policies; he ran in the aftermath of an unpopular war on the platform of ‘human rights;’ and he won. His thesis was ‘change,’ and that is what America and the world got. He kept his word, and change began. No, not Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter!”

Though portraying himself as a common sensical, moral moderate, and even a conservative on some issues, Carter governed as a liberal, much more so than his Democratic predecessors, particularly in the area of anti-Communism.  While Kennedy and Johnson were ardent foes of the Soviet Union, and at least took some aggressive postures against it, Carter seemed content to the let the Russians do whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted.  America was militarily inept under Carter and provided no resistance to the spread of Soviet Communism.

After Islamic radicals seized the U.S. embassy and kidnapped 52 American citizens, Carter did nothing but make speeches.  The hostage crisis dragged on for 444 days.  The U.S. government seemed totally paralyzed.

Carter also found himself unable to handle a multitude of economic policy calamities, everything from an energy crisis to high inflation and interest rates.  He seemed not to have a solution to any problem facing the nation, only to blame it all on the American people.  The misery index reached an all-time high under Carter, rising to nearly 22 percent in 1980.

It has been asked how Jimmy Carter could possibly have been elected.  The fact is he had the benefit of extraordinary luck.  America was disgusted with the Nixon-Ford administration and Carter provided the perfect contrast.  At any other time in American history, his candidacy would have been a joke.

But even with the mass problems that he was unable to handle, Carter recently told an interviewer that his biggest failure as president was not getting re-elected.  He left the presidency after four dismal years.  As the journalist Nathan Miller has noted, Carter “proved the White House is not the place for on-the-job training.”

During the mid-to-late 1970’s, in the wake of Watergate, the Republican Party was on the verge of collapse, with it’s polling at 22 percent and its bank accounts nearly empty.  But Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California, and a former actor, rebuilt, revitalized, and reformed the GOP into a strong, viable party once again.  Reagan lifted both the party and the nation.  Whereas Carter talked of America’s “malaise,” Reagan promoted American exceptionalism.  To Carter, America had done little right; to Reagan the nation had been a tremendous force for good in the world and could be again.

Conducting campaigns of unabashed conservatism and optimism, Reagan won two landslide victories in 1980 and 1984, and saw the election of his vice president, George H. W. Bush, to a “third term” in 1988, a rare feat in American politics.  Eisenhower failed to do it, as did Clinton.  This is owing to Reagan’s strong appeal across the vast American electorate.

Reagan brought a sharp contrast to Carter and liberal policies.  He did not try to move toward the Democrats in an effort to beat them but advocated sharp distinctions.  He vowed to “raise the banner of bold colors, not pale pastels.”

President Reagan came into office vowing to cut spending and slice tax rates.  His tax cut package, the largest in history, led to one of the greatest peacetime economic booms that nation had ever seen.  The misery index dropped to one of its lowest levels ever recorded.

His major foreign policy goals – ridding the world of the menace of Soviet communism, rather than appeasing it – was realized soon after he left office, owing entirely to the aggressive program he put in place.  Reagan rose to meet the challenges posed by America’s enemies, regardless of the opinions of his political foes.

In shades eerily similar to his idol John Kennedy, Bill Clinton emerged as a new, fresh leader in stark contrast to the elderly Reagan and George H. W. Bush.  He was the first president born after World War II, a baby boomer.  But Clinton realized that America did not trust the old Democratic label, so he fashioned himself as a “New Democrat,” campaigning on an economic agenda that might have been confused with conservatism.  He pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class and to keep the nation militarily strong, but instead Clinton passed the largest tax hike in the history of the Republic and gutted the armed forces, slicing in half the once powerful force Reagan had built.

His radical agenda, including the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays in the military and his two leftwing appointments to the Supreme Court made many Americans uneasy.  He also attempted to take over the entire health care industry, putting the government in charge of one-seventh of the national economy.  Desiring to emulate his hero, Clinton created the AmeriCorps, a version of JKF’s Peace Corps.

His far-reaching programs led to the takeover of Congress by the GOP, the first time the House was led by Republicans in forty years.  The conservative presence in Congress for Clinton’s final six years at the helm kept the Democrats from raiding the treasury and destroying the economy.

The setback caused Clinton to moderate his policies and move to the right.  Like Kennedy, Clinton embraced conservative ideas, like welfare reform, a capital gains tax cut that helped stimulated economic growth, and a balanced budget plan.  But unlike JFK, Clinton did it for purely political reasons.  He even flexed his military muscle in Iraq and in the Balkans, though also for the wrong reasons.

During his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton announced that “the era of big government is over,” a campaign tactic in an election year that sounded great but had little meaning.

And though Clinton did not get the nation into a war the way LBJ did, we were already at war with Al-Qaeda but apparently didn’t know it.  The seeds of 9/11 were sown under Clinton; Bush II reaped the rotten fruit.

George W. Bush parallels the Nixon-Ford years quite nicely.  Masquerading as the next Reagan, the Right’s “knight in shining armor,” Bush ran to the left once in office, approving massive government spending unrelated to 9/11 or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  A prescription drug benefit for Medicare, No Child Left Behind, bank bailouts, and numerous earmark-laden bills, doubled the national debt to over $10 trillion by January 2009, with an annual deficit of over $1 trillion.

Though Bush didn’t have any personal scandals to speak of, like Nixon his war policies, and the manner in which the Iraq war began, served as a strong equivalent, leading to Democratic calls to investigate alleged crimes during his administration.  His second term popularity poll numbers were among the lowest in presidential history.

Nearly eight years of war had worn down U.S. forces.  And though Bush campaigned that he would “rebuild our military,” restoring devastating cuts imposed by Clinton, he made no moves to increase its size and scope, at a time when it was desperately needed.

As the scandal-ridden Nixon-Ford years led to Carter, without Bush’s bungling, Obama would have remained the most popular man in Illinois.  But the well-crafted campaign of “Change We Can Believe In” provided the perfect contrast to the Bush years.  And while the country saw Ford as a continuation of Nixon, McCain was seen as Bush’s third term.

Now in office, Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Carter perfectly.  As McCain joked during the campaign, Obama “is running for Jimmy Carter’s second term.”  And from what we have seen thus far, his analysis is right on point.

Obama has followed Carter’s model of national security ineptitude, cutting important weapon systems, capitulating to our enemies, and placing us in a more precarious state.  The military, already in decline, will now shrink further.  A new administration will have to follow Reagan’s example and spend trillions to rebuild it, at a time when spending is at an all-time high and revenues are scarce.

Obama has placed America at fault for much of the world’s ills, apologizing every chance he gets.  He has also taken to bowing to foreign heads of state, which no previous president has ever done.  Like Carter, Obama is bringing the presidency, as well as American prestige, to a new low.

Obama also seems utterly incapable of handling an economy in crisis.  His only plans appear to be more taxes, more spending, more deficits, and more debt.  If he succeeds, America faces the very real possibility of a major debt crisis and bankruptcy if serious steps are not taken soon.

Now that the nation finds itself enduring a second Carter administration, we must hope that history can, once again, repeat itself, or at least rhyme.  It can with a new Reagan to lead the GOP, someone not ashamed to advance conservatism in its original purity.

If the party does not try to “re-craft” its image, to “re-make” or “re-brand” itself, and embraces true conservative principles and solutions to give the American people a true choice, then the current experiment in ultra-liberalism will soon be at an end.

Just as Reagan Conservatism left Carter’s Liberalism on “the ash heap of history,” 2012 can be the year when Republicans do likewise to Obama.

The question is can we find the right candidate?