We have come a long way in the last twenty months. The President of the United States, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate have done for the Republican Party what no Republican could have accomplished. Just as rigor mortis was about to set in, they brought the old corpse back to life. For their efforts on our behalf, we should be forever grateful.

It is easy to lose perspective. It is easy to forget the dire straits in which the Republicans found themselves in and for some time after November, 2008. On the first Tuesday of that month, they were soundly defeated. The Democrats controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress. In time, when Al Franken was seated and Arlen Specter turned coat, the Democrats would attain El Dorado – a commanding majority in the Senate capable to bringing a filibuster to a screeching halt.

The Republicans initially thought that to get along they would have to go along. Had Nancy Pelosi thrown a little patronage their way when the so-called “stimulus” bill was being put together, had Barack Obama intervened to insist that she include earmarks for compliant Republicans in the House, a great many of them would have voted for the measure. It is to her that we owe their solidarity on the occasion of the vote. She is responsible for the fact that on that occasion they presented themselves to the world as a party of principle. If the Tea-Party Movement, which sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the bill’s passage, was not as resolutely hostile to the Republicans as it was to the Democrats, it was because Pelosi and her minions wanted vengeance, sought it, and got it.

Even when the Tea-Party Movement had emerged, the Republicans were not quick to realize what was in the offing. On 2 May 2009, some six months after the election, Jeb Bush emerged from a meeting with Mitt Romney and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor to announce that it was time for the Republicans to give up “nostalgia about the past” and to leave Ronald Reagan and all that he stood for behind. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” he observed, “and the other side has something. I don’t like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that.”

Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Eric Cantor may have been slow to grasp what was going on, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are dopes. It was not until early August in that year that I was willing to admit to myself that a political realignment in the Republicans’ favor was a serious possibility; and, as I noted in a piece posted in the aftermath of the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in early September, I was even then almost entirely alone. At that convention, I had attended a panel on Barack Obama’s first year as President at which not one of the distinguished students of American politics on the panel had in their prepared remarks even mentioned the Tea-Party Movement. And when I asked a question about it, I received a perfunctory answer. It was odd, my interlocutor remarked, that such a movement had emerged in the absence of institutional support. It was, I thought, very odd, very odd, indeed.

Now, thanks to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, the Republicans appear to be on the verge of an historic victory.

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The East Coast (where BG is largely based) is bracing for Hurricane Earl. Having grown up amid tornados in the midwest, this seems mostly just a big thunderstorm, but, man, do people go crazy around here…probably because there are too many federal bureaucrats around these parts…

“We have a lot of Re-education to do,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said this week. And no wonder — once you’ve started with Rationing and Redistribution, it’s the third R of out-of-control government!

Sebelius claims senior citizens need the re-education the most, because they “have been a target of a lot of the misinformation.” Of course, what’s really happened is that Americans have learned more about Obama’s law, and what they’ve learned, they don’t like. The facts are now inescapable, for Sebelius and for the politicians who advocated for this measure — facts that detail the false nature of the case advanced by the president and his allies, and the true ramifications of this wrongheaded reform package foisted upon the American people. They’ve learned that they can’t keep their plan, even if they like it; they can’t count on lower costs; they can’t count on lower deficits; and they can count on more bureaucracy, more rationing, and more IRS involvement in your daily life.

Today, fewer than one-in-three Americans believe their family will be better off under ObamaCare. The same survey Nancy Pelosi touted last month as showing some positive views on the measure illustrates the movement. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that “support for health reform fell over the course of August, dipping from a 50 percent favorability rating in July to 43 percent, while 45 percent of the public reported unfavorable views.”

Americans have these views because of the litany of broken promises within Obamacare, detailed across thousands of websites, hundreds of reports and dozens of research papers released since its passage. They have these views not because they need to be taught a lesson by Kathleen Sebelius, but because they’ve noticed how the politicians and activists with all those big promises are awfully quiet now. They can’t even make the claim that the legislation will reduce costs or lower the deficit any more without getting laughed out of the room.

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Drums are beating in Washington for a value-added tax in addition to the “stimulus” taxes, health care taxes, energy taxes and other taxes President Obama has imposed and wants to impose on hard-pressed taxpayers. Supposedly a value-added tax is a magic elixir for curing budget deficits and excessive debt. Quack remedy would be more like it. If it worked, you’d observe that countries with a VAT had budget surpluses and no debt problems. But almost every country that has a VAT is plagued with budget deficits and excessive debt. … No surprise that the worst financial basket cases all have a VAT. Iceland has the highest VAT rates, but this didn’t prevent its financial crisis and the near bankruptcy of its government. Italy’s VAT rates are almost as high, and its debt exceeds its GDP. Financial crises are looming in Spain and Portugal, and of course they have a VAT. Greece has a VAT, too, and when politicians ran out of money to pay government employees for more than a year’s worth of work every year, they rioted in the streets.  Great Britain has a VAT, and its government finances are in the worst shape since World War II — its budget deficit is expected to be bigger than that of Greece. Moreover, the OECD has acknowledged that “(VAT) tax and transfer wedges have discouraged firms from offering employment and individuals from taking it, reduced employment and increased inequality.”

Political prognosticator Charlie Cook’s latest column in National Journal:

Labor Day is almost here and Democrats are still waiting for the cavalry to arrive. An exhaustive scan of the horizon reveals no rescuers and none of the things Democrats badly need to save them from tough midterm election losses on Nov. 2.

There are few signs of any meaningful recovery, and indeed there is more talk of a double-dip recession, plunging the country back into economic trouble between now and the end of the year. Unemployment seems stuck at 9.5 percent, reinforcing the view that last year would have been better spent focusing on the economy than on health care reform.

Democrats also needed a public re-evaluation of the new health care reform law. They needed the public to decide that it wasn’t so bad, that it was a good idea after all. That hasn’t happened, as pointed out by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s health care monthly tracking poll released this week. Favorable attitudes toward the new law dropped from 50 percent last month to 43 percent this month, and unfavorable views climbed from 35 percent to 45 percent. Twenty-nine percent of Americans believe that they and their families will be better off under the new law, while 30 percent say they will be worse off and 36 percent say it will not make much difference.

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Uh, oh! Phil Hare, the incumbent Democrat running for re-election in Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, is at it again, apparently sore at veterans like Medal of Honor recipient John F. Baker Jr. who are supporting his opponent, Republican Bobby Schilling.

With the help of James L. Moody, chairman of the Sangamon County (Ill.) Democratic Party, Hare — the same guy who said, “I don’t worry about the Constitution,” when asked about the Constitutionality of ObamaCare — filed a complaint Aug. 27 with the Federal Election Commission.

Hare’s target: Veterans for the Constitution, a group of military veterans whose stated mission is to seat Conservative leaders who truly represent the people and do not see the Constitution as an obstacle but as a document the founding fathers intended be upheld at all costs. The group, according to spokesperson Ken Moffett, is comprised of only a handful of active members who have managed to raise a whopping $6,000.

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From 1998 to 1999, Alexi Giannoulias played professional basketball in Panionios B.C. Greece. That part we already knew.

But one thing we still don’t know is how an American with Greek citizenship was able to live in Greece without being drafted into the Greek military.

Under Greek law, all citizens must serve in the military once they turn 18. Much like in Israel, Greek citizens will perform a period of military service after high school.

Alexi Giannoulias was a college graduate when he came to Greece – an age meeting the requirement for military service. So how did he get around the requirement?

With many Americans holding dual Greek citizenship travelling to Greece, U.S. Embassy, Athens details the Greek government’s requirements for military service on its website.

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Did you hear about the Oregon health inspector who shut down a seven-year-old girl’s lemonade stand? How about the California mayor who put the kibosh on a three-year-old’s vegetable stand?

Sure they’re both big-time buttinskys, but this month top honors go to the top cop who busted a guy who was offering free rides to keep drunk drivers off the road.

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for August 2010: Quincy, Illinois Police Chief Rob Copely!

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What a difference a year makes in the character of Democrats.  In 2009, the Democrats in Congress were believing press accounts about the demise of the Republicans Party and the conservative movement.  Amidst those false tailwinds, the Congressional Democrats took on America and its institutions.  As the 2010 midterms approach, however, many of those same Democrats have turned tail and are running away from Pelosi, Reid and Obama amidst headlines like:  “Democrats seek separation from Nancy Pelosi.”  Unfortunately for them, it is too late to run away.

Former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts famously said that “Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.”  Watts, of course, was assuming that when the whole world was looking even politicians would do what was right.  In 2009, the whole world was looking at the Democrats.  Would they build a new level of consensus by charting a middle course?  Or would they follow Reagan’s paradigm that Democrats campaign in the middle and govern on the Left?

Sure enough, Reagan proved right and the Democrats proved arrogant.  According to Eric Cantor, a leading Republican in the House, Obama told him “elections have consequences…and Eric, I won” when discussing tax policy. Cantor also says Obama once told Republican leaders to “stop listening to Rush Limbaugh…and do what’s right for the people.”

Turns out Democrats stopped listening to voters and hardly did what was right for America.  On issue after issue, they ignored public sentiment in favor of their ideological agenda.  The stimulus bill passed on partisan terms.  Cap and Trade was pursued with partisan ideology.  The Health Care Bill was passed despite widespread opposition by Americans – including voters in the Kennedy seat and civilian terrors didn’t make legal common sense to most Americans any more then suing Arizona for a law that mirrored existing federal law.

Now that polling shows an unprecedented Republican advantage going into the Fall elections, many Democrats are not willing to stand by the leaders they supported earlier this year.

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Today, in 1939, Germany invaded Poland, ushering in World War II.