Can She Be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless . . .

Introduction: An Open Letter to Conservatives and Republicans The very early hours of Wednesday, November 5, 2008, are going to seem eerily, excitingly, frustratingly familiar to anyone in this country who is older than twelve, has an IQ higher than 100, and has ever watched a TV news program, or read a newspaper, or clicked on a news story. The polls in Alaska will close at midnight Eastern Standard Time, and that will bring to a close the casting of ballots that began twenty-four hours earlier in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, in the first presidential election since 1952 that will feature neither a sitting president nor a sitting vice president as a candidate for the highest office in the land. And just as was the case in the two preceding presidential elections, we still won't yet know which of the twoor threemajor candidates will be the next president. For once again, probably after all kinds of confusion caused by yet another set of ill-conceived and politicized exit polls that will have Republicans in a panic and Democrats in a state of unrealistic glee, the electoral map will have fallen into place pretty much as it did on the last two Election Days. States along the Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic will be colored a solid Democratic blue, while the Southwest, the South, and most of the nation's midsection will shout out in vivid Republican red. The political operatives crowded together at the huge please-God-let-our-team-win parties in WashingtonDemocrats packing the Old Post Office, Republicans filling the Ronald Reagan Centerwill be awash in anxiety as thousands of unreleased balloons hang far over their heads waiting either to be released in joy or to remain suspended in defeat. For the third election in a row, the vote counts in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire will be inconclusive. Anchormen will be explaining how if the Dems take Florida and Pennsylvania, the Republicans will have to win every other state to record the necessary 270 electoral votesand then move on to an entirely different set of calculations according to which Republicans need win only Florida and Ohio to get there. After which, a panel made up of blabbermouth pundits, who will be getting punchy and maybe even a tad psycho, will fill some time until the "decision desk" can call another state. And then, as the tension grows to an almost unbearable level, the toss-up states will begin to tip . . . but which way? Which way? If you conservatives and Republicansyou Republican thinkers, strategists, politicians, and voters and you conservative activists, intellectuals, and organizerscan come to a meeting of the minds about the seriousness of the threat facing this country in the next election, you can make sure that the balloons drop on you and not on the other guys. You can forestall and prevent the most frightening and disastrous outcome of that early morning. You can guarantee that the candidate you most dread will not be not standing in front of the west face of the U.S. Capitol alongside Chief Justice John Roberts on January 20, 2009. You can prevent that candidate from being the person who will utter the words spoken by only forty-two other Americans in this nation's history. Yes, if you do what must be done to ensure that this nation will be safe and secure and economically viable as it enters the second decade of the third millennium, you and your fellow Americans (and the world) will never hear the sentence specified by Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution spoken as follows: "I, Hillary Rodham Clinton, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the UnPodhoretz, John is the author of 'Can She Be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless . . .', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307337306 and ISBN 0307337308.