The Stakes Keep Getting Higher

In the Sudan, Muslim extremists have thrown a schoolteacher in prison because her students named a teddy bear Mohammed.

In Russia, dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin has thrown his biggest opponents in jail on the eve of an election that can only be seen as illegitimate.

In Venezuela, el Presidente Chavez, who earned the eternal thanks of the Kennedy clan for donating heating oil to folks in the Northeast, is continuing on his quest to stamp out democracy.

In Hong Kong, the Chinese government denied the U.S. military port of call over Thanksgiving, an act of petty belligerence that darkly hints at trouble in the future.

Leading Democrats are still calling for us to leave Iraq immediately, despite overwhelming evidence that the surge is working. In fact, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi’s leading expert on the war, admitted that the surge was working in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But that hasn’t stopped her from calling for a cutoff in funding for our troops.

In the Congress, despite increasing fears of a recession, Democrats continue to move forward on plans to pass the largest tax increase in history.

It’s a dangerous world out there.

Islamic extremists still want to stamp out Western civilization.

Russia and Venezuela are crushing democracy in their own countries, and looking at ways to use their oil wealth to export their visions of tyranny to other countries.

And China continues its campaign to exert its muscle and export its own unique hybrid of communist ideology and newfound capitalist wealth.

The stakes are getting higher for this coming election.

The world is watching to see if we will elect a president and Congress who will confront our enemies or seek to accommodate them.

Will we elect a president who is tough enough to take on the bad guys? Will we elect a president who will stop taxes from going up in a period of tough economic times?

Will we elect a president who is willing to do the hard things that will keep America strong and prosperous?

These are the questions that will become more important to voters next November. All those inside the Beltway who are writing off the Republicans may want to think again.