Are you happy with the political class? Or are you disgusted with congressmen, senators, and governors who take oaths to protect the Constitution and serve the public but end up pickpocketing the taxpayer and scratching each other’s backs?

Most Americans are angry with a corrupt and dysfunctional government. They want to be led by people who know right from wrong and will not compromise the great principles of their Republic for personal gain or convenience. But please, do not point a finger at your least favorite political figures. You reap what you sow. It is you, the sovereign people, whose indifference or ignorance has catapulted to power ruthless opportunists and dangerous daydreamers.

Polls predict that today’s election will change the political landscape in a more profound way than it did in 1994. Even former President Jimmy Carter seemed convinced last week (interviewed on the BBC) that there is no force in the universe to prevent Nancy Pelosi from handing the House of Representatives back to the GOP. The observed reinvigoration among “conservatives” through the Tea Party movement, the sagging energy in the leftist camp, and the realignment among “independents” away from Big Brother ideologies may be just the natural course of the voters’ pendulum, predestined to constantly swing from right to left and back again. But it also could be a sign that many are ready to take more personal responsibility for their rights and freedoms.

“Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books,” said Mr. Smith when he went to Washington. “Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I’m free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn’t; I can, and my children will.”

Have we forgotten how much it cost to earn that liberty? Do we realize that it is up to each and every one of us to preserve and expand it? Wake up, call your friends, say your prayers, and cast your votes. You don’t like the rotten political establishment? Today you are in charge—you can bring Mr. Smith back to Washington.

To keep up with the results of Senate, House, and governor races, go to WORLD’s home page and click on the appropriate tabs above the interactive national map.

For newly empowered congressional Republicans, priority one must be an extension of the Bush tax cuts. There should be enough votes not only from a new Republican majority, but also from some of the decimated and dispirited (and even newly elected) Democrats. If President Obama is smart, he won’t veto the bill.

If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, everyone who gets a paycheck and has taxes withheld is going to see less money in the “net” column starting Jan. 1.

Bloomberg has published some calculations. It reports that, according to the Tax Institute at H&R Block, “for a married couple earning $80,000 a year, [increased taxes] would drain $221.48 in withholding from a semi-monthly paycheck. Married individuals earning $240,000 a year [just under the $250,000 standard President Obama defines as "rich"] would lose $557.78 to withholding in a single semi-monthly paycheck.” Double these figures for a month and multiply by 12 and you quickly see the additional drain on the economy at a time of anemic 2 percent growth.

Another example from Bloomberg: Teachers, teacher aides, and custodial workers who make from $20,000 to $40,000 per year would lose an estimated $50 per paycheck, which is significant at a time when every dollar counts.

President Obama has been telling us how much is enough for us to make. Instead, we should be telling him how much of our money we will allow government to take and spend. That is the theme emerging from the midterm election.

To further personalize the cost of allowing the tax cuts to expire, visit a handy government cost calculator called MyGovCost.org. Type in your level of education, age, and current income and the calculator will reveal what future taxes are likely to cost (these are estimates as everyone’s circumstances differ). You also will see how much your money could earn if you invested it in the private sector instead of having it go to the federal government. The enormous interest figure should rebut arguments by Democrats who claim reforming Social Security by allowing money to be invested in the stock market would bankrupt the elderly.

There are a number of other credible sources Republicans could use to stop and reverse runaway spending. The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl has identified $343 billion in specific spending cuts the next Congress might enact in the fiscal 2012 budget. Riedl acknowledges that cutting spending won’t be easy. That’s because every dollar spent by the government attracts self-interested supporters. But he maintains the identified cuts should be achievable.

The public is in the mood for repairing America’s crumbling financial house. Democrats will have a more difficult time demagoguing spending cuts when they have been primarily (though not entirely) responsible for the ocean of red ink.

The Debt Commission will issue its report on Dec. 1. Many conservatives suspect it will include a call for tax increases. Republicans should say “no” to any tax hikes and focus entirely on government overspending and misspending. Many of us are ready for strong medicine. “We can’t afford it” still rings in the ears of those old enough to remember what parents or grandparents said when we asked for an expensive toy as a child, or a car at 16.

That Puritan ethic remains in the DNA of many Americans. It is now up to Republicans to get it out and remind us of what fiscal and personal responsibility can do to restore financial solvency. It may take a while and there will be some discomfort and even pain involved. But in the end, we will all be better off than we are now and much better off than we will be if we fail to reduce our unsustainable debt.

© 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc.

Excited about tomorrow’s election? I’m less so after talking to Eric Cantor, R-Va. He seems willing to address only one of what I consider to be the two major economic problems facing our country, and that lessens my enthusiasm.

Unless a political asteroid hits the country tomorrow, Republicans will take at least 39 seats from Democrats and gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. After the new Congress is seated, the parties will elect their leaders and Cantor likely will win the No. 2 spot as House Majority Leader. He might even upset top dog John Boehner, R-Ohio, to become Speaker of the House.

Just 47 years old, Cantor is a co-author—with Reps. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.—of Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders. Elected to the House in 2000, he is currently the minority whip and has an 89 percent rating from the National Taxpayers Union and a 97 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. Except for his two votes in favor of the $700 billion bank bailout known as TARP, there’s not much for conservatives to dislike about the pro-life congressman.

Republicans like Cantor have talked a lot about dealing with out-of-control federal spending, but they also need to recognize that we have an out-of-control Federal Reserve Bank (our nation’s central bank). Most Americans understand the former problem but not the latter. The Fed’s propensity to destabilize the dollar and the economy is the proverbial “elephant in the room” among conservatives.

When I spoke with Cantor at a political fundraiser last week, I was hoping he would indicate a willingness to pressure the Fed. I asked him what Republicans would do to get the Federal Reserve under control, especially since it has already pumped $1 trillion into the financial system and is poised to create another $750 billion to $2 trillion. Cantor told me that he doesn’t know much about monetary policy and the Federal Reserve, but that he is committed to working on getting fiscal policy (taxes and spending) under control. In other words, he’s ready to work on just half of our economic woes.

I’m sure Cantor is telling the truth about his unfamiliarity with the Fed. The Federal Reserve is a complex bank. Although self-defeating, its primary function is simple to understand: Keep inflation and unemployment low. The Fed’s two main tools are the creation of money out of thin air to pump into the financial system and the withdrawal of money from the system. The subprime mortgage debacle, the stock market crashes of 2000 and 2008, the skyrocketing price of gold, the nation’s pension problems, and the low rates of interest senior citizens are earning on their money are all caused by the Fed injecting massive amounts of money into the economy. These are very basic facts and I’m sure Cantor understands them.

But if Republicans gain power and fail to hold the Federal Reserve accountable, I think the American people will hold Republicans accountable in 2012 or ’14. It’s inevitable that senior citizens and the Tea Partiers soon will figure out that the Federal Reserve is the “other half” of our economic crisis.

And I’d be much more excited about tomorrow’s election if GOP leaders like Eric Cantor were expressing more of a desire to deal with the Fed-induced financial and political tsunamis beginning to form.

The crowd I saw at the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally to Restore Sanity/Fear was white, under 35, hip, and carrying witty signs, like, “I HAVE A SIGN.” Or, “MY VIEWS ARE TOO COMPLEX TO FIT ON A SI.” All the organizations I saw who set up shop around the event were left-leaning (Amnesty International, Faith in Public Life), and the Democratic National Committee had set up phone banks for volunteers to man after the rally. People carried America flags with corporate logos as the stars and wore “Fight Fox” stickers. One young person held the sign, “Things are pretty OK.”

Three days before a game-changing election, while the nation struggles with deep unemployment and federal debt, the last thing Democrats might want is heavy media coverage of a rally of financially secure, young liberals. Stewart at one point described the event as being for people with “jobs and lives.”

Moreover, a number of Democrats have made the point that this hurts their campaign operations because thousands of potential get-out-the-vote volunteers were camped out at a Comedy Central rally. Associated Press reporter Phil Elliott tweeted today, “Clever signs don’t vote or phone bank.” President Obama even made the point to Pennsylvania canvassers today, in reference to a recent Democratic rally:

Coming to a rally, that’s not the hard part.  What I need this weekend is 20,000 doors knocked on by all the volunteers who are here today.

Stewart and Colbert stayed funny and relatively nonpolitical, with Stewart holding “serious talk” until the end of the show, when he skewered the media for its overreactive coverage of politics (And of this rally? One report noted that more than 1,000 journalists applied for credentials to the event – organizers issued only 400). Stewart said at the end:

This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear. They are, and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times.

As Election Day approaches, candidates are bringing out their children. The grown daughter of Connecticut Senate candidate and ex-wrestling executive Linda McMahon recounts how her mother has inspired her. Candidates in Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Ohio have similarly aligned themselves with their children, and the children with them.

It’s good politics in the final days of a campaign, the experts say, because it ends things on a positive note. In other words, children are considered a positive in the evaluation of political candidates.

Except where they’re not, as some politicians allege in the Oklahoma gubernatorial race. In a recent debate, candidate Mary Fallin had this to say:

“I think my experience is one of the things that sets me apart as a candidate for governor. First of all, being a mother, having children, raising a family.”

Some consider this a cheap shot, because Fallin’s opponent, Jari Askins, has never been married and is childless. New York Times Motherlode blogger Lisa Belkin wisely offers the flip side as well, in the form of California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s grown sons, who appear to be unsavory sorts, such that she doesn’t mention them in her campaigning. ”Is managing—or mismanaging—a family,” Belkin asked, “relevant to running a state?”

It’s a great question, and one I’ve touched on here in the past. On the one hand, I can sympathize with those who believe you’ve got to bring more to the table, if you want to lead people in a political capacity, than a track record of competent parenting. I’m skeptical of a candidate who imagines, as Mary Fallin seems to suggest, that her chief qualification for governor is her status as a parent. After all, I know plenty of wonderful mothers and fathers who haven’t the grounding in economics and policy analysis or the skills as public speakers and consensus builders to be effective officeholders. At least not by my standards.

On the other hand, if someone has raised a brood of vipers, then I’m inclined to question his character. After all, I see my sins reflected in the sins of my children. If they grow up morally ungrounded and lacking self-control, that says a lot about my own moral centering and spiritual fortitude. So on the question of how one’s children have turned out, I consider “quite well” to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for my vote.

But then we have those politicians who have no children at all. I know saintly people who are childless and unmarried, so I wouldn’t consider that an automatic negative. But they have purposefully walked a path of deep spiritual discipline and self-sacrifice—for a cause, or people in need, or perhaps in the prayer cell.

I confess I’m far more skeptical of people who choose a life of singleness and/or childlessness but who don’t replace these sanctifying callings with something that requires a profound other-orientation. A good parent and spouse learns to die to himself daily. So does a godly ascetic, and a mission worker. But someone who is none of these runs a great risk, it seems to me, of being shallower than I would like a leader to be.

Perhaps I’m being a Pollyanna to expect politicians not to be shallow, but a man can dream, can’t he?

The great “what-if” looks like it is about to happen. With all of the media attention focused on Tuesday’s midterm election, Republicans are faced with a greater task than winning a majority in the House of Representatives or getting at least close enough to a majority that they will be able to halt or slow the Obama agenda.

And come Wednesday, Republicans could either suffer the political equivalent of a morning-after hangover or find themselves in a position to do more than just say “no” to the administration’s policies.

Reversing or cutting funding for some agenda items like mandated health insurance and extending the Bush-era tax cuts aside, Republicans are more likely to earn long-term voter approval if in addition to opposing Obama’s policies they also have a positive agenda.

For decades, Democrats have owned the “victim” vote, portraying themselves on the side of the weak and the oppressed. Republicans should accept that as a challenge and begin to empower, not indulge, the poor and commit to the liberation of those who want to be set free of programs that too often enslave them.

Republicans should begin with school choice. Every poor person in every city should be able to withdraw his or her children from failing public schools and place them either in charter or private schools with taxpayer money. More than any welfare program, school choice will free a generation of youngsters from repeating the cycle of poverty. Republicans should re-authorize the D.C. Scholarship Fund, which Democrats allowed to die, despite its popularity and success.

Republicans should put every government agency and program up for examination and work to eliminate the ones that do not meet standards of necessity and cost-effectiveness. Those that meet the necessity standard, but are not cost-effective, should be outsourced to the private sector to see if it can do a better job at less cost.

America used to be a nation that celebrated inventors and the inventive. Today we penalize the productive and subsidize the nonproductive and get more of what we don’t need and less of what we require.

The key for Republicans is to not allow Democrats and their big media allies to set the table. Too often the standard has been to highlight what Democrats propose and what Republicans oppose. That template needs to change. Republicans, if they are smart (and this will require some proof) must seize the agenda and demonstrate how and why their ideas are superior to the Democrats’ entitlement and spread-the-wealth-around philosophy.

They can do this by going after the Democrats’ base, starting with African-Americans. Republicans should introduce themselves to African-Americans, listen to them explain their hopes and aspirations, and then help them achieve those hopes and dreams by employing Republican principles. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich says the election is about food stamps vs. paychecks. Republicans can show the poor how to get off the former and start earning the latter.

Playing against “type” will disarm Democrats and critics in the media. What are they going to say, “You can’t help poor African-Americans because we would rather they remain poor”?

Newly elected members of Congress should bring their own staffs to Washington instead of the usual practice of employing existing staff. If Washington is to be changed, the insiders who keep change from happening must go.

The Republican Party must also change. The coming GOP success is not a victory of party, but of philosophy. It is the Tea Party movement that is making it possible for Republicans to regain power. If party leaders in and out of Congress try to quell passions and put out the fire that is burning in so many bellies, they will deservedly lose everything in 2012.

If the Republican Party stokes those flames and adopts a positive and workable strategy, not just to dismantle the Obama agenda, but to establish a new one of smaller, more effective, and less costly government, accompanied by a commitment to personal responsibility and accountability, this election wave will become a tsunami two Novembers from now.

© 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc.

We will surely remember 2010 as the Tea Party election, the year that ordinary people gave the entire political class a drubbing, first in the primaries and then at the polls.

Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen tell us why in their book Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two Party System. Rasmussen and Schoen, Republican and Democratic pollsters respectively, draw from a wide body of polling data to provide an insightful picture of these people who have been shaping the races that they will largely settle next week.

According to the authors, the Tea Party has been a spontaneous, principled, and yet passionate response to a politically unhealthy divide in the country. That divide is not fundamentally between Democrats and Republicans or between liberals and conservatives but between what they call the American mainstream and the political class. We have seen anger on display by mainstream Americans at town hall meetings last year, at Tea Party rallies for the last 18 months, and chiefly in this year’s Republican primaries. And we will see it again next week expressed peacefully but decisively at the ballot box.

Such Tea Party anger is rooted not simply in their disagreement over the present government’s economic and spending policies. And the movement is not a rebellion of heartless skinflints. Fundamentally, Tea Partiers are moved by the view that “the federal government has become a special-interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests,” Rasmussen and Schoen point out. Those who govern us are out of touch with ordinary Americans. They don’t listen to the people who put them in power. They’re arrogant. Barney Frank sits securely in his gerrymandered, liberal, Massachusetts district lording it over the rest of us on account of his seniority in the House of Representatives. Culturally and institutionally, the link between government and the people has become stretched intolerably thin. And so, because of the extent of Tea Party fury over this thin link, Congressman Frank is sweating out an election for the first time in 30 years.

People in government may start out like the rest of us and go to Washington with the best of intentions, but they become part of a new class, an insulated political class, and they adopt the attitudes of that class. As Peggy Noonan put it, “The establishment came from America, but hasn’t lived there in a long time.” Or they have always been part of that ruling elite, but simply moved from one part of it to another when they went to Washington.

Rasmussen and Schoen write, “A self-selecting group of influencers from business, government, academia, and the media now occupy[sic] the most prestigious institutional positions in American society and in power centers in Washington.” So when the economy went bust, the ruling class got bailouts from their fellow members in Washington and they all got richer. The rest of lost our jobs, lost our houses, or just slipped a little further behind. The American mainstream caught on to this immediately.

The conclusion we should draw, say Rasmussen and Schoen, is that, “Americans don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center. They want to govern themselves.” But that view of self-government is an American conservative idea. America is still a largely center-right country. Despite the New Deal, the New Society, the New Morality, and constant catechizing by the media, Hollywood, the public schools, and academia, America has remained attached to private enterprise and self-government, and to what candidate Barack Obama called “guns and religion.” The political class doesn’t believe in any of that. But Americans still have the Constitution, which next week gives us the legal means of reminding them who it is they serve.

Mud has not stuck to Dan Coats, who seems ready to regain his U.S. Senate seat from Indiana.

Indirectly, Coats also has taken out Indiana’s star Democrat, Evan Bayh, and likely will deal a big setback to U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who was handpicked by Bayh to be his heir apparent.

It may depend on his margin of loss, but Ellsworth’s otherwise bright future in Indiana politics will be dimmed by this campaign.

Politically, Coats has scored twice on the Democrats, jumping into the Senate race in January and likely contributing to Bayh’s subsequent decision not to seek a third term.

Coats also has survived a Democratic Party attempt to frame him as a fat-cat lobbyist. Sometimes that kind of negative campaigning works, and the Bayh team tried it as soon as Coats announced his challenge last winter. But the real Coats story was different.

While in the Senate he was a leading advocate of tackling social problems with private-sector remedies. He cited an example in the campaign: As president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, he worked with Prison Fellowship to find 35,000 mentors for children with parents in prison. “There’s a limit to what government can do,” he said in an interview.

His initiatives as a senator during the 1990s helped prompt then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to call for public-private partnerships for social problems, which became part of the Bush presidency.

It’s been hard for Democrats to frame Coats as the bad guy because he has been such a decent guy. He’s been married to his wife, Marsha, for 45 years. He’s been a friend to Democrats and practices civility instead of talking about it.

Ellsworth, oddly enough, has professed ignorance about Coats. In response to a question in an interview about good qualities in his opponent, he said, “I don’t know him that well. I don’t know his personal makeup.”

At one level, Ellsworth is the most attractive young Democrat in Indiana, a potential successor to Bayh as the party’s leader. Bayh brought the Democrats out of the wilderness of a Republican-dominated state in 1988, winning the first of two terms as governor. Then he won the Senate seat that Coats had held, again for two terms. He tried to run for president in 2008 as a moderate Democrat but could not get enough support in the race against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He hoped to give Ellsworth a boost by deciding to not seek a third term in the Senate, calling on state party leaders to name Ellsworth the nominee.

Ellsworth looked like the right kind of Democrat for Indiana. He’s been a sheriff in southern Indiana. He is more conservative than his national party and has the National Rifle Association’s endorsement. He’s a pleasant person. Like when Mr. Smith went to Washington, he has an almost naïve approach, as in, “Shucks, let’s just do what’s right.”

Yet that innocence can be a weakness. He says when he went to Congress after winning in 2006, he “didn’t know who Nancy Pelosi was. I didn’t know who Steny Hoyer was. My running for office wasn’t about making a majority.”

If he didn’t bone up on who they were, it’s no wonder they were able to get him to do their bidding on key issues.

Ellsworth seems to be the right Democrat who came into a statewide Indiana race at the wrong time. He can’t abandon his national party or his leaders in Congress and has to defend his vote for the stimulus bill and national healthcare.

It’s hard to do that in Indiana these days and at the same time paint Dan Coats as a villain.

Recently I talked to a friend who is very active politically. He is passionate about justice, regularly participates in campaigns as a grassroots activist, and votes in every single election. He also has the most superfluous knowledge of the Constitution and has no idea what “a government of laws and not of man” means.

“How do you choose from the list of candidates?” I asked. “It’s quite simple,” he answered. “I vote for whoever feels right, whose philosophy sounds the closest to mine.” I kept pressing: “But how do you hold these people accountable if you don’t know the fundamental law of the land?” My friend said, “Oh, I don’t have to worry about such matters. We have the Supreme Court for that. It’s their job to know the Constitution.”

This left me dumbstruck. We require that a person go through years of training and exams before he calls himself a surgeon and is granted the right to touch a scalpel, because an unskilled doctor may kill someone. We mandate that anyone who wants to operate a motor vehicle must pass a written, driving, and vision test because incompetent or visually impaired drivers can cause multiple casualties. And yet we let anyone born in the United States call him- or herself a citizen—a title that goes with the right to delegate powers to people whose decisions affect the lives of billions in profound ways.

My friend is not some hillbilly—the guy has a Ph.D. and a successful professional career. If intellectuals are willing to let our liberty stay buried in a book on a shelf in a building somewhere in our nation’s capital, if they are comfortable letting only a handful of lawyers interpret it for us, what about the rest of the country? How long until such complacency turns the United States into Venezuela or Somalia?

I recall approaching a playground as a kid to find my brother taunting a boy bigger than he. Frustrated, the angry boy asked my brother if he wanted to fight. My brother replied, “No, but my big brother will fight you.” Instantly, the boy assaulted me with a flurry of fists. Recently, the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA) picked a fight with Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Ohio. The ladies at the SBA weren’t looking for any assistance in battling the congressman, but Driehaus went running to Big Brother, the Ohio Election Commission, for help. It’s quite a scrap and I hope the ladies win.

Marjorie Dannenfelser and her organization hired Lamar Companies to erect billboards in Driehaus’ Cincinnati district stating, “Shame on Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion.” The SBA rightly exposes the truth of Driehaus’ healthcare vote—the legislation allows for federally funded abortions. (For a detailed explanation of the abortion aspect of Obamacare, read the report from the Office of General Counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

Moreover, it appears that the first-term congressman has little regard for free speech. Citing a peculiar Ohio election law, Driehaus filed a criminal complaint against the SBA with the Ohio Election Commission, alleging that the SBA made a “false claim” on its billboards. Driehaus’ campaign contacted Lamar before the billboards went up, and fearing it would get dragged into court, Lamar refused to erect them until the issue was resolved. The Ohio Election Commission’s staff attorney recommended dismissing the case, but a “probable cause panel” ruled 2-1 that a full seven-member panel hearing be held on Oct. 28, just four days before the election. Dannenfelser may have to pay a fine and spend time in jail if the SBA loses.

Throwing a counterpunch, the SBA filed suit in federal district court seeking to overturn the Ohio election law and, somewhat ironically, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief on the organization’s behalf, stating that the Ohio law “is vague and overbroad, and it cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny. . . . The people have an absolute right to criticize their public officials, the government should not be the arbiter of true or false speech and, in any event, the best answer for bad speech is more speech.”

Shame on Steve Driehaus. A pro-life Catholic, he voted for a healthcare law that does indeed allow for federal abortion funding. And shame on him again for trying to limit the SBA’s speech. I’m cheering for the ladies in this fight. He deserves to get beat up by the girls.