Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical
Agenda
By Sean Hannity
(Harper, 256 pages, $14.99 paper)
Sean Hannity scores again.
Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda
is not simply one more book from a talk radio or television star.
There are plenty of those in today’s world, most deservedly
disappearing with a speed one can only wish were true with the
Obama era.
What Hannity has written is a modern, book-length version of
Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 televised speech for Barry Goldwater,
“A Time for Choosing.” Just as Reagan’s speech served as an alarm
bell in the day, if the Republican National Committee really wanted
some bang for its buck in 2010 it would buy Conservative
Victory in bulk and distribute it to every GOP candidate and
campaign manager across the land.
In three succinct sections, the Fox and talk radio host has
taken the time in carefully considered detail to do three important
things. First, lay out the case against President Obama’s radical
agenda and why victory in 2010 is so critical. Second, remind of
the classic conservative principles Ronald Reagan used to win
elections and successfully govern, in addition to discussing the
1994 Gingrich Contract for America. Third, apply those Reaganite
principles to the political world of 2010 — and beyond. With a
warning against the folly of a third party thrown in.
For Hannity, the first clue of the coming Obama nightmare was
provided by columnist Erik Rush. It was Rush whose piece on a
Chicago pastor named Jeremiah Wright had attracted Hannity’s
attention, the journalist appearing on Hannity’s February 28, 2007,
show to share his disturbing findings. Hannity, way ahead of the
curve, grasped instantly what Obama’s presence in the Wright church
portended — and in his usual forthright style was quick to spread
the news.
Except, of course, the mainstream media didn’t see it as news at
all. Instead, blowing by the candidate’s chosen connections to the
likes of Wright and, as Hannity famously describes him, quote; “the
unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers,” it presented a different reality
altogether: Obama the centrist Democrat who speaks in measured
tones and wishes only to bring Americans together.
As Americans have ruefully discovered, none of this was so.
Which gives Hannity the ability to unpack with precision to a
belatedly attentive audience the political mindset of the Obama
White House. The mindset that has given rise to repeated charges
the president is a socialist, a charge Hannity believes and
documents. With detailed discussions of everything from the black
liberation theology taught at Wright’s church (described accurately
by the American Thinker’s Kyle — Anne Shiver as “Marxism
dressed up to look like Christianity”) to his parents to various
Obama allies from Wright, Ayers, and others, Hannity makes the
case. One of the lesser known is Ron Bloom, the ex-SEIU negotiator
and now the administration’s “manufacturing czar.” Bloom has made
himself a poster boy for the socialism charge with his statements
that “free market is nonsense” and “we kind of agree with Mao that
political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”
Alrighty, then. Message received.
Suffice to say, millions of Americans have now caught up with
Hannity’s curve. Just plain frightened out of their wits by the
president’s penchant for indebting the country to the tune of
un-sustainable trillions of dollars, the anger at government
takeovers of everything from car companies to health care to
financial institutions is long since hell and gone from the mere
palpable. Appalled at presidential apologies for America in foreign
venues around the world (sometimes preceded with a subservient bow)
— even as a virulent anti-Semite and apocalypse-admiring nut-job
at the head of Iran is allowed to plow on undisturbed in his quest
for nuclear weapons — Americans were agog at the sight of a
professed Communist and “truther” (Van Jones) and Mao-admirer
(Anita Dunn) serving as White House aides.
Yet as disturbing as all of this is, Hannity understands exactly
that wringing one’s political hands is not the way out of this
nightmare. Correcting the mistake of electing Obama by taking back
control of Congress — and hence the purse — is the first
step.
Which is why Hannity makes a point of devoting a full third of
Conservative Victory to both Reagan and the Contract for
America. A Reaganite in full, Hannity understands in his bones what
some conservatives seem to have forgotten. Which is to say that
Reagan’s success was built on a thorough understanding of classic
principles. Principles that applied not just when Reagan first gave
national voice to them in his speech for Goldwater, or when Reagan
himself was in the White House — or for that matter when the
Founding Fathers crafted the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution — but then, now, tomorrow, and on into political
eternity.
Those Reaganite principles, the “three-legged stool” of “a
strong defense, a strong economy, and strong social values,” are
explained by Hannity precisely as Reagan made them clear for an
earlier generation. Importantly he does more than just highlight
the reasoning behind low taxes, budget cutting, a strong military,
and standing up to be counted on social issues like abortion or
same-sex marriage.
Hannity meets head on the seemingly eternal whine from
faint-hearted conservatives that if only conservatives would
“moderate their approach in order to appeal to centrists and
independents” victory would be in hand. This in fact is an old
whine in a continuously recycled bottle that dates at the least to
the initial Republican response to the New Deal. Hannity gets it
right in saying this kind of approach is how Republicans lose their
way. From twice-losing GOP presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey to
commentators such as today’s “conservatives” David Frum and David
Brooks, the idea is always the same. If Republicans just run as
some sort of Democrat-lite, they will carry the day. It didn’t work
for Dewey, not to mention later GOP nominees with names like Ford,
Dole, and McCain. Hannity takes the time to peel back the modern
incarnation of this argument in sections titled the “Big Tent,”
“Country Club Republicans,” and, amusingly, “Fee Fi Fo Frum.” In
deft strokes he dismantles the idea that acquiescing to the idea of
big government, abortion, and same-sex-marriage is some sort of
political winner for conservatives.
What is particularly important in this section is that Hannity
doesn’t content himself with the all too easy rebuttal to Frum and
the others. He takes the time to analyze their arguments,
illustrating the stark differences in approach. Not coincidentally,
this was the way Reagan himself approached the GOP liberal
establishment of his own time. Taking on the likes of Gerald Ford,
Nelson Rockefeller, and New York senator Jacob Javits, among
others, Reagan eventually carried the day, remaking the GOP into a
winning party of “bold colors” and not “pale pastels” — a Reagan
phrase that is a Hannity favorite.
A book of this nature would be incomplete if Hannity didn’t
apply the Reagan principles to the issues of the moment. Poll after
poll, not to mention elections in supposedly blue states like New
Jersey and Massachusetts, shows Americans are fiercely opposed to
the growth of government. Which means candidates are going to be
called on to supply ideas for dealing with economic growth,
national security, health care, energy independence, and much more.
Hannity expands an idea from his website at hannity.com, focusing
on a dozen issues of the day and directly applying what he terms
“first principles.”
In writing Conservative Victory Sean Hannity has
written the conservative primer for 2010. It couldn’t come at a
better moment.
The time for choosing has arrived. Again.
