Rush Limbaugh has often noted that the Democrat Party, which has voted to force President Bush to abandon the Iraqi field of battle before democracy has fully taken hold in the country, is "invested in America's defeat." It's true that the foul words emanating from the mouths of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi confirm the accuracy of Limbaugh's assertion. However, one has to consider a rather troubling notion: that the American people are also invested in America's defeat.

After all, it was the American electorate that voted to put the Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, knowing full well that the party believed victory in Iraq is impossible. Pelosi, Reid, Jack Murtha, John Kerry and the other members of the Democrat cult of personality made no secret of their desire to sabotage our troops before they could complete the mission--yet the voters entrusted power to that party anyway.

It's easy to point out that the Democrat Party has lost its will to fight (if they ever had the will in the first place, which is debatable). It's much harder to confront the grim question of whether the American people have also lost their will to fight.

Election results matter. They say things about where the country is headed, what the country believes. In 1980 and 1984, the voters embraced Ronald Reagan's conservative principles and boundless optimism. In 1994, the voters declared that Bill Clinton had chosen the wrong path during his first two years in office, and that the GOP had to check his worst impulses. In 2000, the voters decided that Clinton had brought excessive shame upon the Oval Office, and that giving Clinton a third term via his Vice President would send the country down a perilous path.

The 2006 midterm elections were also a profound statement--a profoundly depressing one. You can't dismiss the '06 election results as the mere consequence of American frustration with the GOP. For all its faults, the Republican Party was, and is, the only major party with a serious perspective on the threat of Islamofascism. On what logical grounds could the American people dismiss that party from the seat of Congressional power, just five short years after 9/11?

There is a fear that should haunt all conservatives--a fear that the American people, by virtue of last year's election results, have decided that they're simply not willing to bear the burdens and pay the high costs of freedom. A fear that the electorate prefers comfort to courage. A fear that the country has, at long last, reached the tipping point--the point where demagoguery is considered decency, where failure is considered fruitful, where surrender is considered superior.

Since 9/11, conservatives have made it clear to the American people that we are in a critical contest with our very future as the championship. President Bush and other prominent members of the Republican Party have specified that if we do not win this battle in the War on Terror, our children and grandchildren will face a threat far greater than what we face today. The right has explained the rules of engagement to the point of exhaustion--and yet, it seems that the American people have decided to cover their ears rather than hear the truth.

These are grim times. The party of defeat seems to be the party with momentum. The country has seemingly reverted to a 9/10 mentality, when we need a 9/12 mentality now more than ever. The stakes are simply too high for morale to be this low.