At some point, and I hope you will agree, there comes a time when it’s time to stop wondering what to think about a thing, and start thinking about what to do about it.

I don’t need anyone to tell me the Democrats as currently comprised are a race of liars and thieves. I don’t need anyone to remind me that the media aren’t really stooges for the Left, but rather were founding members of the Left a century ago, which you can find highlighted in any Marxist handbook under the chapter “Propaganda”. I don’t need to be further outraged about what happened last week in Connecticut’s public pension plans or New Jersey’s school system, just as had happened the week before in California’s and Oregon’s. I don’t need to know that socialism by any other name still dehumanizes, impoverishes and enslaves. Or that it ultimately collapses into chaos, anarchy and finally totalitarianism.

What I want to know is what any candidate hoping to be president plans to do about it….especially considering the “teams” we’re assembling for him to work with.

I don’t want a candidate who comes out and asks me to place my confidence in him, “let me do this or that”. I want a candidate who comes out, with the bark on, and says, “This is what’s wrong and this is what we need to do…so follow me.”

So, anyway, I was reading the comments from last Wednesday’s most recent presidential star poll, and was taken once again by the handicapping of some of the (as yet unannounced) candidates, as if this were the 5th race at Aqueduct, instead of one the most important presidential races since 1824. Who’s more photogenic, for God’s sakes? Pity poor Abe Lincoln if he lived today. Who’s quicker to make a decision, tougher on crime, more likely to get the unmarried female vote, etc, etc. You’d think we were trying to select the replacement for Simon Cowell on “American Idol”.

I’ve been harping on this since ’08, and conservativecurmudgeon did an FP post here at RS (“I don’t care WHO (yet) the next President is, but WHAT the next President is”) laying out criteria that suits my tastes in presidents pretty well. But then, first crack out of the bat, the handicapping began, starting with Ron Paul, and working through 181 comments that had absolutely nothing to do with the central theme of CC’s article; THE WHAT of being president, not the who.

I don’t care if you’re a paid or a freelance shill for the candidates, I don’t think we should proceed with this knife fight until we get some rules straight.

And those rules should be: The candidates, and their shills, shouldn’t be telling us right now how we should like their chances better because of this demographic, or that resume enhancement. We (The People) have been setting forth in no uncertain terms what our “new standards” for being president are, just as The People established new standards for the members of the Congress only a few weeks ago. I like those standards set out by CC, for starters. So if you want to tell us that Ron, Rudy, Herman, Mitt, Sarah, Newt, Mike X2, Chris, Bobby, is your man (or your babe), fine, fit them into that mold first, step by step. Don’t measure them against each other, or as Karl Rove would do, against various key demographics…until you have first measured them against our Gold Standard.

But there’s more, at least as I see it.

The Legacy of Leadership

We have 60 plus new House members moving in, and six new senators, and their prime objective is to pave the way for yet a newer class of almost equal size in 2012, at which time, the real game of power will begin, since a new president will also be seated then. By 2014 a new Speaker may well be elected from this first class, the incoming freshman of 2011, and the US Senate will have adopted a changed public personae vis a vis a whole rang of policy issues, from taxes, to entitlements, to the size of government.

By 2012-2014 the new Congress will not be your father’s Oldsmobile.

The changes will be monumental, not incremental. And for the Dems? Let’s just say that what starts out as a chattering of sore losers will quickly diminish into a gnashing of teeth.

Just remember, when Ronald Reagan left office in 1988 the Republicans, even more than the Democrats, couldn’t wait to see him go away. In a way, I never forgave RR for two things; one, for not making unrestrained war on the federal bureaucracy (which I’ll discuss in more detail as the year progresses) and 2) not securing a conservative legacy in the White House and the GOP leadership.

Now I know GHW Bush is a nice man, and held to many conservative principles enumerated by CC. I like him. But he was a ruling class Republican, and noblesse oblige is not really a way to restore the natural rights of the people as enunciated in the Constitution. And in the long run, the same can be said for his son, GW, a fine Christian man, a warrior, also standing for most of CC’s postulates, but who turned his other cheek just one time too many when it was my face that was being slapped….not by Al Qeada, mind you, but by Congress.

But both of these good men were sandwiched between two of the most viral assaults on the United States Constitution and the liberty of men in our history, albeit for different reasons, and I’m convinced that neither Bush knew or understood this had been the primary purpose of the Left, and had been for a century. They simply saw the battle as between two factions of a competing political elite.

Ronald Reagan did see this, but for whatever reason, wasn’t able to make conservativism stick among the leadership.

This has to be an objective of this next president. We have to do better if we are going to really recapture the original dream of the Founders and become once again, “that shining city on the hill”, “that beacon of freedom to all men”, and “that slayer of tyrants” (my words). And it must be designed to last forty years…with a blueprint for the next forty.

Now if a long term plan of 40 years of Congressional and Presidential dominance by conservatism sounds too Bold and too Greedy…let me remind you that the Left started out on this same journey of dominance, trying to destroy the Constitution about 40 years ago. The final assault on Fortress America began two years ago, in 2008. We’re in the countdown. The ball is rolling.

They’ve always meant business, so we damned sure better had, as well.

This will either be the generation that saved Liberty or let it slip from our fingers. History has thrust that charge upon is whether we want to accept it or not.