I turned 39 years old today. It’s a special landmark for me as it is of course the last year of my thirties…and well, that means next year I’ll turn *gulp* 40.

So as what happens every year, I stop for a few moments and take stock of my life and appreciate the blessings that have been bestowed on me, the friends I have been blessed with, a career path I enjoy and a family who have supported me and continue to do so through some rough times.

Of course, I can’t take full stock of myself without giving due thought to politics, as this takes up a good amount of my time, both professionally and personally.

It seems lately, here especially, folks are taking stock as well…taking a look at the lay of the land.  Paying attention to how the chess pieces are currently positioned on the board and I thought, what better time than now to address what we see, what we know…and yes, what we expect from the next several months?

Over the past while, since October 5, 2011, really, we’ve experienced a great upheaval.  As a science fiction aficionado, the phrase that comes to my mind is that there was a great disturbance in the force.

All of us had hoped, and yes believed, that we would see Governor Sarah Palin run for the office of the presidency.  The battle I envisioned in my mind was epic:  Rebel fighters united against the Empire…the fellowship of the Ring and their allies versus Sauron and his army of Orcs…the Federation versus the Borg.

And when it didn’t happen, many of us had a rough go at trying to figure out what to do with all that energy, passion and fight.

Some of us moved on to back candidates we thought would be the best of a group that was, shall we say, deficient given our expectations of what we could have had.  Some others weren’t able to adjust to the new reality and continued to hold onto the hope that Governor Palin would change her mind if only she knew how much support there was for her.

But it was not to be.

And now here we are after a long primary process with only one candidate standing.  A candidate who is currently giving consideration as to whom he should pick to be his running mate.

So how do we Palin supporters as Constitutional Conservatives and warriors for the relentless reform movement fit into this picture?

Well…to be brutally honest…we don’t.  Not really.

The one who finished on top was not our first choice.  Or our second choice.  Or our 50th choice.  To say there’s no love lost between us would be, I daresay, an understatement of great proportions.

But while we didn’t have a role in picking the candidate nor more than likely, will we have any real say in deciding who his running mate is, we can and will have a role in informing the electorate about what positions and what policies are the best solutions for America.  We can and will highlight Governor Palin’s stellar record on all of these issues and push back on false narratives.  As our good friend Michelle Malkin repeated at the RightOnline conference this weekend, “you do not defeat narratives by ignoring them.  You defeat them by crushing them and pushing back forcefully.”

These are some of the battles that lie before us, of this there is no doubt.

But first we must focus on what can only be described as an existential threat to our Constitutional Republic and to our way of life.

Which leads us to my next point.  What can and should we expect to happen over the next few months, up to, including and after the fall elections?

A lot of this depends on the cues we get from Governor Palin herself, of course.  Any specifics would be derived by her endorsements and any directives or strategies she engages in that she makes public.

Generally speaking, we know that job one and job two is to fire Obama in November and turn our Senate bright red.

The thing is, in order to fire Obama, we’re going to have to vote for someone we don’t care for all that much.  And yes once again, I recognize this to be a huge understatement.

But what are we to do?  Stand down and ignore the White House?  Of course not!  As Palin has stated endlessly, we cannot survive another four years of Obama.

So how do we balance the unpleasant idea of supporting a less than stellar candidate versus the desperate need to remove the human wrecking ball from the Oval Office?  How do conservatives maintain our integrity while pulling the lever for someone with a record that makes most of us cringe to our collective core?

Governor Palin gave us our answer on Friday night:

And then, in our hoped for, prayed for, worked very hard for, predicted victory this fall, then we have to make sure we don’t go back to saying, “Well, right on, our team’s got the ball so we get to ignore now what everybody’s doing!

NO!  Our nation can no longer afford partisan apathy.  Please stay ever vigilant, holding feet to the fire.

Did you catch that?

The answer for us is to defeat Obama, take over the Senate…and then stay on guard.  Don’t turn away just because Republicans are in charge.  Don’t white wash mistakes or cover for cronyism or any politics as usual games just because the ones playing them aren’t Democrats.

We maintain our principles by not walking away after the majority of voters go back to their regular lives and instead, We hold the GOP machine to account for their actions.  How?  We’ll operate outside of the machine while working to influence it.

But first, we must vote Obama out of office.

Now some might suggest that pulling the proverbial lever for the GOP nominee in November is submitting to the machine.

To this I say, not just no, but HELL NO.

Look.  The reality of politics dictates that the only one who can successfully defeat Obama is the one at the top of the opposing major party ticket.  This isn’t an opinion…this is just the way it is.

So the only way to get rid of Obama is to vote for the GOP nominee.  Period.  And if Obama is the threat we know he is, then we must vote for the GOP nominee in order to defeat him.  There is simply no getting around this reality.

That said…rather than this being a sign of submitting to them, we are in fact raging against them.  We will use them as a tool to remove a greater threat then stay on them like a tick.  We’ll watch their appointments.  We’ll watch the deals they make.  We’ll report what promises that they announce and hold them to account for how they pay back their donors.

Unlike previous election cycles where we’d simply walk away, we know now that to do so would be disastrous.  As the Governor said, we can no longer afford partisan apathy.

Very few if any Palin supporters are happy with who we’re stuck with and I’d be the first to jump for joy right along with them if we had had another choice.  Say one Warrior from Wasilla.

But like Rush likes to say, I live in Realityville.  It’s not as much fun as some of the fantastic dream scenarios I come up with of course but our being anchored in Realityville will prepare us for the fights that lie ahead.

And at this point I feel that is what is important.  We must focus on the battles that are, rather than wish for battles that aren’t and will never be…at least not in the immediate future.  To do otherwise opens the door for despair and frustration when real life catches up to our imaginations and we’re unable and unready to face the war raging around us.

The path that lies before us is a difficult one, but then we’re warriors and we know that battles aren’t always fought in the most pleasant circumstances.

We don’t always get to choose the conditions on the battlefield.  But we can choose how we respond to them.

We can choose whether to fight or to cut and run.

Our Republic is at risk both from enemies from without and from within.  This fall, let us all work together to take on the radical left and their Anointed One.  Let us retake the Senate.  Let us work to get good conservatives in office at all levels of government.

And then let us continue the battle long after the dust has settled…after that “hoped for, prayed for, worked very hard for, predicted victory.”

We have been charged to be the guardians on the wall and we must not fail for the sake of our posterity.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” – Ronald Reagan

Rage on Barbarians!