I don’t think there is any way to overestimate the importance of the mid-term elections. Although I wish I could view the world through non-partisan eyes, Barack Obama and Harry Reid have conspired to make that impossible. I’m just hoping that a sufficient number of Americans come out of their collective coma before the fat lady has a chance to warble “Nearer My God to Thee” at this nation’s funeral.

The trouble is that we have a president who seems to lie awake nights trying to come up with new ways to destroy America. For openers, he is terrified – partly because of his liberal base and partly because of his own questionable background – to be confrontational towards the Islamists who are enthusiastically waging war on us and our allies. So even as he does the right thing in Iraq by trying to prevent the barbarians from exterminating Christians and Kurds, he keeps assuring those who are out to create a caliphate that we are limiting our response.

His defenders like to say that he is thoughtful and deliberate, seemingly slow to act only because he is so concerned with nuance, so profoundly aware of the possible consequences of taking action. What makes that analysis so comical is that when Hamlet behaved exactly the same way, most people wrote it off as pathological indecision at best, cowardice at worst. It’s also worth noting that, thanks to Hamlet’s constant dithering, everyone is dead by the end of Act V.

For anyone who is curious what this impending caliphate would look like, they merely have to consider the fact that these savages are beheading children; turning captured women into sex slaves, much as the Japanese did during World War II; and committing genocide with a relish unseen since the days when Nazi Germany was running its gas ovens 24/7.

Instead of doing everything in his power to defeat pure evil, Obama prefers to remind us that Bush’s war in Iraq was a disaster. He happens to be right, but for the wrong reason. The war was a blunder not so much because we waged it or because we failed to find weapons of mass destruction, but because George Bush insisted that our actual mission was to bring democracy like a gift box of chocolates to that misbegotten land, and because he kept repeating the moronic message that Islam is a religion of peace as if he were a parrot gone berserk.

I do not believe that the majority of Americans are as weary of war as they are of squandering billions of dollars and thousands of military lives in the naïve hope that at the conclusion of hostilities, our sworn enemies will like us, when the aim should be that they, along with every other potential foe, fear us.

I believe that if Obama unleashed our full military might on the Islamic State or whatever these creeps are calling themselves this week, and turning the sand these monsters stand on into glass, most Americans would stand up and cheer.

I also believe that it is time that our politicians quit pretending that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. A good Muslim is someone like the non-Muslim Meriam Ibrahim, who barely escaped a hundred lashes and death by hanging, who was condemned as an apostate, but who refused to deny her Christian faith. A bad Muslim is everyone who clapped and danced on 9/11 and who, in his heart of hearts, takes pride in every act of violence by a fellow Muslim perpetrated on Christians, Jews and anyone else labeled an infidel by his vile religion.

To me, it seems that there are only two groups of peace-lovers in the entire Middle East. Those would be, one, the Israelis and, two, the members of the Iraqi military, who shed their uniforms and tossed away their American-supplied weapons as soon as they were confronted by the blood-lusting vampires heading towards Baghdad.

Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for, especially if you’re one of the 389 readers who cast votes in my latest poll, which asked for your personal choice to be the 2016 GOP presidential candidate.

To begin with, I want to apologize to those of you who took me to task for leaving Dr. Ben Carson off my original list of 16 potential candidates. It was an innocent oversight. I had actually caught it a few hours after putting the list together, but I forgot to alert Steve Maikoski, the brilliant fellow who manages my website. I did let him know the morning of the posting, but by that time the article had gone out to those who subscribe to my blog. Fortunately, I had that possibility covered because, along with the 16 names, I had left a place for “Other.”

Even though I had specifically asked for a single name and no commentary, some people couldn’t resist explaining their vote. A few others felt they couldn’t narrow it down and insisted on naming two or three candidates. Those people received a curt message that read: “One man, one vote. This ain’t Chicago, bub!” Without exception, they saw the light and re-submitted a single name.

As I have pointed out in the past when polling my readers, I make no pretense that I’m doing what the likes of Pew and Gallup do. I am not breaking my responders down by religion, gender, income, region or age. But I do believe my readers represent a cross-section of Republicans, whether they lean right to the Tea Party side of the GOP or to the Libertarian left. By and large, even those who damn what they call the Republican establishment would prefer a presidential candidate with an ® after his name to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren or anyone else branded with a (D).

I must confess that I found the results surprising, in some cases extremely so. Speaking personally, I confess that I was buoyed both by how well Governor Walker polled and how badly Senator Rand Paul did.

Far and away, the top six vote-getters were: Scott Walker, 79 votes; Ted Cruz, 58; Trey Gowdy, 57; Mitt Romney, 44; Ben Carson, 41; and Rick Perry, 31.

The only others to receive double digit support were: Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, each with 14 votes.

Marco Rubio garnered 9 votes, Paul Ryan received 8; Mike Huckabee got 6, Chris Christie, 5; Jeb Bush, 4; Mike Pence, Susana Martinez and Rand Paul, 3; Rick Santorum tied me with 2; Donald Trump, John Kasich, Allen West, John Bolton, Nikki Haley and Mike Lee, 1.

I can’t speak for any of my competitors, but when I see that in spite of not having spent a dime on TV spots and not having visited Iowa or New Hampshire even once this past year, I am essentially running neck and neck with Rubio and Christie, and leaving the likes of Trump, West and Bolton in the dust, I have no choice but to officially toss my hat in the ring.

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