While most of the attention has been focused on the presidential primary races for both parties, something as crucial, if not more, will happen come November.

A number of Congressional seats will be up for grabs nationwide, which will either swing the balance of power more towards the Democrats, or bring a Republican majority back.

For conservatives, the latter is still better than the former, but in the primaries which have happened and are still to come, the people have been voting as to just how conservative or not these people will be.

I think I'm stating the obvious when I say I don't think it's going to matter if John McCain wins the presidency if he doesn't have a conservative legislature to keep him in line. That would go double for Hillary Clinton and triple for Barack Obama.

The sad thing is, however, with a desire for change and bipartisanship supposedly sweeping the country, more moderates are bound to be carried along the same wave that is bringing us center right and center left kinds of nominees for the presidency.

A president cannot act alone. It was the wisdom of the Founding Fathers to not give one single individual the power to decide the fate of a nation and her people, without quite a few others going along. With 100 Senators and several hundred Representatives in the House, along with nine Supreme Court judges, the founders felt that a king could not arise if the other two were empowered to keep the president in check. Likewise the president with the other two.

Of course, across the expanse of our history, each one of the three branches of our government have made power plays which have effected our nation. Some of them for the better, many for the worse. The fact that it didn't get worse is because of the checks and balances in place.

Where I go with all this is, the president isn't going to solely determine where the nation goes. Depending on what they want to do in office, a president can set the agenda and lead the way, they can make proposals and even suggest particulars of how programs, laws or agencies should look. However, they do not legislate, and it is up to the Congress to determine if they want to follow the president's lead or not.

Since bipartisanship has not been the game for as long as I've been alive, anyway, presidents tend to get things done when they have a likeminded Congress. There are exceptions. The same is true from the other way around--the legislature might lead out but a president might oppose them through the veto.

To keep this country from going down the road of tax and spend to create a universal health care program, or provide any other kinds of benefits, or do any other kind of programs, there will need to be a healthy majority of conservatives in Congress to oppose a Democrat president, and most likely to tone or water down any proposals a McCain White House might produce along the lines of immigration or global warming.

Especially, when, if spurned by conservatives, McCain retains his Senate seat and continues to co-sponsor legislation with the most liberal of Democrats (think Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy).

That might actually be the greatest argument for getting McCain into the White House that conservatives will find--to keep him out of the Senate where he's been doing so much damage the last 10 years.

But I digress...

Since we already know a conservative choice is not going to make it into the White House, and can only hope McCain will govern more conservatively than he legislated, a conservative Congress to back him up with his conservative inclinations and to oppose him with what's not would be essential. The same would follow with Clinton or Obama.

So, as I said, it might be too late for this go around. In two years however, more House and Senate seats will come up, and then even more two years after that.

In four years time, we will more or less know the aftermath of the 2008 general election, and whether it's even possible that any one of these presidential candidates still standing actually can survive more than one term. If they can't, having a conservative Congress which has already foiled greater spending, higher taxes and every other liberal threat to democracy will make it easier for a conservative president to take office.

However, if there aren't enough conservatives in Congress to oppose whatever their left-leaning counterparts and president might conjure up, then it will be tougher to gain any traction, until those polices utterly fail. They will, but some take longer than others. I think we knew long ago the ramifications of Social Security, but neither side has done any serious thing to tackle it head on and stop the beast before not only it is bankrupted, but the length and breadth of the federal government with it.

It is for this main purpose I could not pull very hard for Ron Paul, even though most of his policies line up with my thinking. Kind of a free trade isolationist, if that makes any sense. You don't go policing the entire world, but you do as much as you can to open up markets around the world, while balancing the playing field. Let other nations agree to our terms for once. Get rid of income taxes, go minimalist with the federal government, defend the borders, defend the country, and let the free enterprise system work. Let consumers dictate what products they want. Make companies work to stay in business and make a profit rather than subsidizing some and taxing to death others.

But again, I digress...

Without likeminded individuals in Congress, Paul would be a laughingstock as president, as many people probably already think he is as a candidate. Why? Because people want change, but they don't know what that is. Many are currently following a charismatic, dulcet voiced young Senator from Illinois with little to no practical experience in leading a nation, with policies, just barely being revealed now, that are so far left in their thinking, this nation will take another life altering turn along the lines of the New Deal or the Great Society. Legislation, as I mentioned above, we're still feeling the effects of and have been unable to rid ourselves or our rectify. Does that sound like people actually know what kind of change they want?

So, if you have conservatives in your primaries, vote for them. If they become their party's nominee for the fall, vote for them again. We might not be able to pave the way for a conservative takeover of the White House this go around, but perhaps a conservative legislature can usher in one four years from now.

If not, more damage will be done by a liberal Congress with a president who is either willing or enthusiastically able to sign their works into law.

We need to fight this from whatever angle we can. If Congress leads, a president can follow until another president is voted in who will lead.

Look.

If John McCain didn't seem to take such great delight in combating conservative members of his own party, there probably wouldn't be much of an issue with him.

In reality, with the exception of a few close encounters of the liberal kind, McCain has been largely conservative. He's definitely there on defense and foreign policy, and he has been there on abortion, though he favors stem cell research. He's as about as conservative as it gets with earmarks and pork barrel speeding, despite the two no votes against Bush tax cuts. If he had used his current line about no spending cuts in the bills to justify the no votes then, instead of the class warfare rhetoric of his esteemed left-leaning colleagues, there wouldn't be an issue there, either.

Maybe it's just that I don't know very many 70-year-olds, but the ones I do know are not very vain. They're on the other side of life, where climbing corporate ladders or scoring points, or proving themselves right isn't really their goal. So, why is it that whenever anyone talks about McCain, his poking a finger in the eye of conservatism is always associated with looking good before his liberal peers?

Doesn't sound much like a battle-tested, prisoner of war to me.

Especially one from the Vietnam era. In general, we've treated our veterans better before and after that war. Thanks to some of those liberal friends of his, who stirred the anti-war sentiment at home and then grew up to be the establishment they railed against, the soldiers, ever the pawns, never the deciders, were reviled and castigated.

While many are not happy with our fighting men and women being in Iraq, the hysteria surrounding the soldiers and their roles has not been the same as it was during the Vietnam War. There, the liberals won out, much to the shame and degradation of a country, and a generation. Make love not war might have been a more benign slogan, maybe even a more powerful one, for everyone, had it not been held up by the jeering, sneering fanatics of spoiled, smug children.

You'd think McCain wouldn't forget that. Or at least, not to the extent that he would turn his back on any supporter, anyone who would remember him as sacrificing for his country. The liberals aren't particularly known for that, despite having their own prominent veterans of that war. Yet, McCain has done so, angrily, with open hostility.

One might shake their head at McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Lieberman, and one might question just what he was thinking in co-sponsoring them, but it's the blatant disregard at times for the conservative cause that makes it sting so. He is one of us and so he should be one of us. There's nothing wrong with speaking your mind. There's nothing wrong with correcting us when we're wrong. But we're not wrong on the essence of campaign finance reform, immigration or global warming. He could stick to his guns by spending more time and energy on government waste and earmarks, rather than helping the left out with some of their pet causes.

So, fighting his own instead of his enemies is one thing.

That leads to his judgment. Fighting your friends, especially when they're right, is just plain stupid. Sponsoring bills that show a disconnect from the will of the American people, or at the very least, a misunderstanding of just how deep conservative principles should go, shows a lack of judgment. He might get the war right, but what about other things? Despite the fact that fighting terrorism is the defining issue of our time, there's plenty of other things that can tank in the process, if proper judgment is not being used.

So, for me, it's less about the bills and the fact they represent liberal thinking than it is the "I know better than you because I got this gut feeling and you better follow or else," mentality.

That sounds like George W. Bush to me.

Last time I checked, he wasn't being as highly regarded as Ronald Reagan, not even among conservatives.

So, we can argue all you want about what's going to be better for the country, a complete left turn with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or a less angled lean leftward, but either way, you're heading left.

The argument that allowing Obama or Clinton to get elected, so that the Democrats get blamed for whatever happens is appealing, as long as it is enough to finally convince enough fence sitters and naysayers that conservatism is the way to go, while not irreparably damaging the country. If the country goes down the tubes in the meantime, conservatives will only have themselves to blame.

Death by slow boil, like the frog, doesn't seem as appealing. There's no catalyzing event, no rallying around the standard bearer. If nothing goes particular wrong as the left turn takes place, then change of any kind becomes the enemy.

Besides, many people, including those of our own movement, are at a loss as to what conservatism is, since there have been too many flavors of it resembling liberalism. Compassionate conservatism means more spending and more government waste on programs and policies that people, in their own homes and communities should be taking care of. Personal responsibility has been replaced by the Nanny state.

It is definitely possible to be compassionate and be conservative. You don't apply it on the federal government level, though, and I'm not really all that crazy with it on the state level, either.

So, don't tell me to accept John McCain as he is. Don't tell me his brand of conservatism is good enough. Good enough is Ronald Reagan. Best is someone else yet to come, but unless McCain presides differently than he legislates, it won't be him. And frankly, that would be more damaging for the cause of conservatism than four years of Obama or Hillary.

The fact of the matter is, any president is unlikely to ruin the country so much that it can't be redeemed. There are too many checks and balances in place. However, enough liberal governing might be enough to wake up the lukewarm conservatives, or those who think they can rely on just one or two of the conservative coalition. It takes all three to have a winning combination, in an election, and in a president.

So, if conservatives are going to get over anything, it's going to be over their primary conservative concern, to vote for the candidate who is the best conservative overall, not for the one who they identify with the most.

I was never keen on voting for someone who reminded me of a fellow employee. I want someone who's smarter than me, who knows how to make decisions, not belly ache and then invite me to drink his problems away.

I also don't want a bully who thinks he knows better. That's been done, from both sides of the aisle.