Orson Scott Card On The War And The Election

[Intel Source: Instapundit] Mormon sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card recently wrote a very interesting essay on the importance of this election with respect to the War. An excerpt:

What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless -- only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America's future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush -- somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted -- and somebody who will "kick butt" in foreign policy.
So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we'll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.
While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.
I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush's careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.

(Note that he says "policies", vice "tactics", in describing President Bush's successes in the GWOT.) While I disagree with his assumptions about Tuesday's elections (I think the new Democratic House majority will be too scared of being labelled "defeatists" before 2008 to reduce funding for the war effort), he makes some good points about the next Presidential election. Personally, I'm expecting both parties to nominate goofballs, which could allow something like a McCain-Lieberman "Party of Realism" to emerge in the middle. (This realism is represented in the 1st Idaho Congressional District by Larry Grant.) In the meantime, hopefully the shock of losing control of the House will jolt the Republicans back into reality, and allow the realists to get control of the Party away from the Incompetent Right that's currently in charge (as represented in the 1st Idaho Congressional District by Bill Sali).