Eight weeks out and you don't have to be a political professional to feel what's in the air: The Republicans have a big win coming.

The question in the House races is: Will they get to 218? Will Republicans pick up the 39 seats they need to win control of the 435-member chamber?

Another way of asking: Is this 1994 again?

That year the Republicans swept the House races, picking up 52 seats and getting, for the first time in 40 years, a Republican majority and a Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich. Even then-Speaker Tom Foley (D., Wash.), lost his seat that year. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi is famously in no danger—she won her seat with 72 % of the vote in 2008—but it probably means something that she appears to have gone missing from the national scene. CBS, in March, had her at 11% approval among registered voters.)

A Gallup survey of registered voters this week had Republicans beating Democrats in a generic ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%. In the 68-year history of that poll, the GOP had never led by more than five points. RealClearPolitics has Republicans ahead in 206 races and Democrats ahead in 194, with 35 too close to call. The Cook Political Report puts 68 Democratic House seats "at substantial risk," while judging less than a dozen GOP seats to be in real trouble. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made news a few weeks ago by conceding the obvious: that the Republicans could take the House. Top Democrats have told the same to Politico.

The news is so good it's prompting mutterings on the right: The liberal media are trumpeting the inevitable GOP triumph to make the base complacent and the party peak early. Anything but a Democratic debacle will be spun as proof that Obama's support, while soft, endures. "The Republicans had a typical off-year chance to win back power and failed. The reason? Voters just don't trust them."

What's going to happen? I put the question to one of the architects of the 1994 Republican win, the conservative activist Grover Norquist, a contributor to the Contract with America, member of the Gingrich kitchen cabinet, and founder, 25 years ago, of Americans for Tax Reform. In conversations over those years, I've found him to be among the most insightful political observers in Washington.

So, is this 1994 again?

"It could be, and it looks like it," he said. He noted that Republicans in 1994 were not polling this well and this strongly this early.

There are parallels, he said, between '94 and '10. One is determination. The Republican Party establishment sets its mind specifically to winning back the House in '94—"before that, it had seemed impossible"—and is doing so again. Both 1994 and 2010 were preceded by striking off-year GOP victories in New Jersey and Virginia, which signaled a coming Republican wave. In 1994 the Republican theme "was not just 'Vote against Clintonism,' it was 'Vote for the Contract with America.'" The Republicans are putting together a 2010 contract and plan to unveil it in late September, as they did in '94. The first contract, says Mr. Norquist, was "not a campaign tool but a governing tool." He remembered data that said before the '94 election, less than 20% of voters had heard of it. But after the election the media made the contract famous. "It was a great gift to the Republicans," he said, because it forced them into a semblance of unity by making them focus on a specific agenda.

But there are differences between 1994 and 2010. For one, this time around "the Democrats can see what's coming." They didn't see the Republican wave rising in 1994 until it was too late. "When you see something coming a mile away, you can build a ditch to keep it away." Democrats, he says, have put aside a lot of money for negative ads in the last days of the campaign. "For a year, Democratic strategists said 'We'll pass health care, they'll love us.' 'Recovery summer, they'll love us.' 'We'll run against Wall Street, they'll love us.'" These "narratives" failed. "The one thing they have left is: 'We will put together a lot of cash and run a lot of negatives ads showing why it's not policy that counts, it's that the Republican candidate had a DUI 10 years ago.'"

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Another difference between '94 and '10: "There wasn't a Tea Party movement in '94." There was a Perot movement, which was "much less visible and organized." Ross Perot backed the Republican House effort in 1994. "This time we have a thousand mini-Perots"—Tea Party leaders—"who are against the Democrats and for the Republicans." Their rallies, Mr. Norquist says, are gaining strength.

Republicans, he argues, must determine to stay focused, and not become distracted by issues that are not central to the campaign. "There's the danger of getting sidetracked by shiny things," he says, citing Arizona's immigration law, or "the mosque in Manhattan." These issues do not win new votes, "they only please voters you already have." Mr. Norquist says: "Harry Reid is stapled at the forehead and the hip to Obama, and it's hurting him. But Gingrich says the most important issue of the day is the mosque, and Reid gets new life out of it: 'I strongly differ with the president's statement on the mosque!' It gives Democrats the chance to say, 'I'm not like Obama!'"

Another distraction: "All the time and effort turned into rehabilitating George W. Bush. His former aides are out there arguing about who should get credit for the surge. What? . . . For those who believe Bush was doing something useful and central to jam it into the middle of this election—we lost the past two elections because independents didn't like Bush!" The rehabilitation effort loses potential votes, wins no new ones, and distracts from central themes. Mr. Norquist offers a prediction: "Watch CBS try to get Bush family and friends to do interviews to insert Bush back into the campaign the weekend before the election."

What should Republicans focus on? "Spending per se is a palpable issue. The central question is not only taxes or the deficit, it's spending, and you can see this in polls. . . . There is not a Democrat who can say, 'I was not part of the spending explosion that threatens you and your country.' It's the one thing they can't defend themselves against. They don't want to stop spending."

What about high spending by Republicans in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House? That's true, he says, but big spenders have been getting "pre-purged" in the primaries. Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski "said she's bringing home the pork. Well, she lost."

Mr. Norquist sums the matter up: "The big issue, and people know this, is the explosion of federal spending that is damaging our economy and threatening our future."

The New American Supermajority

By Peter Ferrara on 9.1.10 @ 6:08AM

The aerial photograph does not lie. Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally drew just about as many people as any other rally ever held at the Lincoln Memorial.

I took the train into town from home in Northern Virginia, packed in like in those Tokyo subway video clips, even though I was late. I marched down to the Memorial from the nearest subway stop at Foggy Bottom, where the D.C. bureaucrats had helpfully disabled the steep escalators from the underground tubes to greet the half a million or more celebrants of liberty on the way in.

From my perspective on the ground, arriving late at about 11:15 (the rally started at 10), I could never get close enough to the podium even to see. But I could hear. And that was all I needed.

On his radio and TV shows, Beck has emphasized economics, political history, and near libertarian political philosophy. He has previously indicated his personal belief in God. But in this speech, he revealed a vision that encompasses the whole Reagan coalition from 1980.

Beck tutored me once again with his insight that the founders grew up in an America where the evangelist George Whitefield crisscrossed the colonies inspiring a national religious revival, that they probably personally heard or read Whitefield sermons, and that this foundation informed their work in later founding America.

Of course, Whitefield himself suffered some moral blindness and shortcomings, as has Beck in his past, as we all have. That is why we all need God. As Beck said in explaining the message of the event:

Saturday's message -- shhh! It's a big secret. I've only talked about it for six months on one of the biggest cable news shows in history and the third largest radio show in America…so…just between us. Don't anyone tell the media: The secret is God…We're running low on personal responsibility. We've got a loss of integrity, a loss of shame in this country, a loss of principles and values. We've lost our way because we have lost God…. And hopefully, we will mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor [as the signers of the Declaration of Independence did]. At least we will begin to look at those things, start to maybe challenge that we haven't valued those things high enough --honesty, integrity, merit, personal responsibility, family, and God. That is why we call it the "Restoring Honor" event.

And that is why the event involved spotlighting those in the military who have earned honor by demonstrating merit, something many in the media also couldn't understand. Beck explained that this is the road to the revival of America: "We have lost our honor. We must restore our honor first, our principles."

But Beck's point about Whitefield made clear to me that the Reagan coalition, which Beck embodies quite well, goes all the way back to 1740, and was the foundation of the American Revolution itself. Indeed, it goes all the way back to the Mayflower Compact.

The 70% Supermajority

Beck kept emphasizing to the crowd, "You are not alone." That is fully documented in Arthur Brooks' brilliant new book, The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future. Indeed, Brooks goes on to make much the same argument as Beck and his Restore Honor rally, but in purely secular, academic, carefully logical terms. Brooks writes:

Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government. By contrast, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the adult population opposes free enterprise and prefers government solutions to our problems.

Here's a wow moment from the book. An April 2009 survey of registered voters asked which of the following statements about the role of government comes closer to your view:

(a) Government should promote fairness by narrowing the gap between rich and poor, spreading the wealth, and making sure that economic outcomes are equal.

(b) Government policies should promote opportunity by fostering job growth, encouraging entrepreneurs, and allowing people to keep more of what they earn.

Only 31 percent chose (a), which is the foundational view of the liberal/left. Over twice as many, 63 percent, chose (b), which is a classic formulation of the conservative, libertarian, free market philosophy. And this was at the height of the reign and popularity of Obama's liberal/left regime.

Brooks also recounts that in March 2009 the Pew Research Center asked Americans: "Generally, do you think people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time, or don't you think so?" Brooks reports that 70 percent agreed they were better off in a free market economy. Only 20 percent disagreed. And this was at the depths of the financial crisis, when the American people lost trillions in financial wealth, in their homes and in the stock and bond markets. Brooks adds:

Free enterprise is even more popular than [the terms] capitalism and free markets. In the same Gallup poll mentioned above [January 2010], a stunning 86 percent have a positive image of free enterprise. Only 10 percent have a negative image. Similarly, 84 percent have a positive image of entrepreneurs, while just 10 percent see them negatively.

On taxes, Brooks reports a spring 2009 poll finding that "69 percent of Americans think the top federal tax rate should be 20 percent or lower. Even 62 percent of Democrats think this." A 2009 Pew Values Survey found that "76 percent of Americans believe the strength of this country is mostly based on the strength of American business…. In 2010, Gallup found that 66 percent of American believe that when big business earns a profit it helps the economy, while just 18 percent think it hurts the economy." Also, "51 percent of Americans believe unions hurt rather than help the nation's economy."

On government, Brooks reports a survey which asked, "Overall, would you prefer larger government with more services and higher taxes, or smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes." An overwhelming majority of 69 percent of Americans preferred smaller government, while only 21 percent favored larger government. Moreover, emerging Republican Congressional majorities take note, 63 percent of Americans favor cuts in government spending, with only 14 percent against.

The Moral Foundations of Liberty

But the more fundamental point that Brooks makes is that to win the battle for the future of America, advocates for the 70% majority need to do a better job of advancing their cause. They cannot concede that the left best represents fairness and the true interests of the poor, while focusing only on economic growth and materialistic concerns. They need to go back to the moral foundations for liberty and free enterprise, and explain that free markets best promote true fairness, equality, and human happiness, and the true interests of the poor and working people.

Brooks explains, "The main issue in the new American culture war between free enterprise and statism is not material riches -- it is human flourishing. This is a battle about nothing less than our ability to pursue happiness," which means freedom. But, Brooks adds, "Rarely do we use the aspirational themes necessary to make the moral case for free people and free markets that we know in our hearts is right."

Brooks argues that it is the 30 percent coalition that advances the cold, mechanistic, crassly materialistic view. Just give the poor money, and they will be happy, as will everybody else that matters when we give them money too taken from the rich to attain greater income equality. He explains the moral foundations of the 70% view, saying:

By contrast, the 70 percent majority are New Age radicals. They have simple faith that ingenuity and hard work can and should be rewarded….They know that no amount of unearned money can ever heal the human heart. Money is fine, but it is something else entirely -- something less tangible and more transcendental -- that really brings satisfaction. The 70 percent majority understands that the secret to human flourishing is not money but earned success in life.

People flourish when they earn their own success. It's not the money per se, which is merely a measure -- not a source -- of this earned success. More than any other system, free enterprise enables people to earn success and thereby achieve happiness.

Brooks goes on to explain exactly what is meant by "earned success":

Earned success means the ability to create value honestly -- not by winning the lottery, not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn't even mean making money itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek explosive value through innovation, hard work, and passion. But it isn't just related to commerce. Earned success is also what parents experience when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, and what artists feel when they create something of beauty.

The point, in other words, is "The big problem is not that unhappy people have less money than others. It is that they have less earned success. Your mother was right: Money can't buy happiness." But the crassly materialistic, redistributionist left misses this point.

Brooks explains the implications of this for public policy:

Knowing as we do that earning success is the key to happiness, rather than simply getting more money, the goal of our political system should be this: to give all Americans the greatest opportunities possible to succeed based on their hard work and merit [Beck's word again]. And that's exactly what the free enterprise system does -- makes earned success possible for the most people. This is the liberty our founders wrote about, the liberty that enables the true pursuit of happiness.

The Equality of Liberty

Included among the moral foundations of liberty is the principle of equality. "But for the large majority of us, this means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome…. If this leads to income inequality -- above some acceptable floor -- so be it." In other words, the 70% supermajority accepts safety net programs for the truly needy, to ensure that no one suffers in deprivation. But they do not support going beyond this to income redistribution, taking from the successful to give to the less successful just to achieve more income equality. That is just stealing. This is a fundamental, rock bottom principle that we should all promote with more awareness and fervor. As Brooks explains:

The majority believes government should protect the returns for hard work and merit. The 30 percent coalition effectively wants to penalize success…. [But] equality of income is not fair. It is distinctly unfair. If you work harder than a coworker but are paid the same, that is unfair. If you save your money but still retire with the same pension as your spendthrift neighbor, that is unfair. And if you stay in your house and make the mortgage payments even when its value drops but your neighbor walks away from his without recourse, that is unfair.

What most helps the poor, moreover, is not government programs, but free market opportunity and prosperity. Brooks further explains:

Only free enterprise truly addresses the root causes of poverty. Our solutions are not based on a reslicing of the existing economic pie by government officials and bureaucrats, effectively taking money from the well-off and giving it to the poor through punitive taxation and growing welfare. They are based on an expansion of the pie in ways that will increase everyone's share through policies and a culture that creates incentives for Americans, allows them to tap into the generative power of entrepreneurship, and ultimately lets them earn their own success.

In contrast, "Because they do not strengthen culture and reinforce values, American welfare programs have spectacularly failed to end poverty."

Consequently, let us not forget either the broad public appeal of economic growth and empowerment as a political and policy theme, and the common sense appeal of incentives in explaining how that works. Martin Luther King III told the Huffington Post on the day of the Beck rally that his father in 1967 and 1968 "was focused on economic empowerment….We have made great strides, but somehow we've got to create a climate so that everybody can do well, not just some." That is a tailor made theme for the 70 percent Supermajority as well, as the late Jack Kemp demonstrated during his political career.

Moreover, blue collar labor union activists are really just after prosperity for their families as well. It's just that they don't recognize yet that general free market economic prosperity is the best way to achieve their goals. Better explaining how that works could vault the 70 percent Supermajority into the 85 percent Consensus.

A broad explanation of the appeal of free market economics seems to be necessary to win the votes of the whole 70% coalition. Adding the economic growth theme to Reagan's traditional conservative themes seemed to be what promoted the Republicans from the mid-40s in their share of the vote to a long term governing majority. Because of the workings of the British political system at the time, Margaret Thatcher focusing on consistent conservative themes was able to dominate British politics for a record time with only that same mid-40s share of the vote.

This is not a prediction. But with perceptive leaders like Glenn Beck and Arthur Brooks lighting the way, I am expecting to see an authentic American political giant who truly understands the 70 percent Supermajority liberate America in 2012 with their record setting votes. I just note that authoring the introduction to Brooks' book was Newt Gingrich.

By MARK HELPRIN

The plan to erect a mosque of major proportions in what would have been the shadow of the World Trade Center involves not just the indisputable constitutional rights that sanction it, but, providentially, others that may frustrate it.

Mosques have commemoratively been established upon the ruins or in the shells of the sacred buildings of other religions—most notably but not exclusively in Cordoba, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and India. When sited in this fashion they are monuments to victory, and the chief objection to this one is not to its existence but that it would be near the site of atrocities—not just one—closely associated with mosques because they were planned and at times celebrated in them.

Building close to Ground Zero disregards the passions, grief and preferences not only of most of the families of September 11th but, because we are all the families of September 11th, those of the American people as well, even if not the whole of the American people. If the project is to promote moderate Islam, why have its sponsors so relentlessly, without the slightest compromise, insisted upon such a sensitive and inflammatory setting? That is not moderate. It is aggressively militant.

Disregarding pleas to build it at a sufficient remove so as not to be linked to an abomination committed, widely praised, and throughout the world seldom condemned in the name of Islam, the militant proponents of the World Trade Center mosque are guilty of a poorly concealed provocation. They dare Americans to appear anti-Islamic and intolerant or just to roll over.

But the opposition to what they propose is no more anti-Islamic or intolerant than to protest a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor or Nanjing would be anti-Shinto or even anti-Japanese. How about a statue of Wagner at Auschwitz, a Russian war memorial in the Katyn Forest, or a monument to British and American air power at Dresden? The indecency of such things would be neither camouflaged nor burned away by the freedoms of expression and religion. And that is what the controversy is about, decency and indecency, not the freedom to worship, which no one denies.

Although there is of course no question of reciprocity—no question whatever of a church in Mecca or anything even vaguely like it—constitutionally and if local codes applied without bias allow, there is unquestionably a right to build. Reciprocity or not, we have principles that we value highly and will not abandon. The difficulty is that the principles of equal treatment and freedom of religion have, so to speak, been taken hostage by the provocation. As in many hostage situations, the choice seems to be between injuring what we hold dear or accepting defeat. This, anyway, is how it has played out so far.

The proponents of the mosque know that Americans will not and cannot betray our constitutional liberties. Knowing that we would not rip the foundation from the more than 200 years of our history that it underpins, they may imagine that they have achieved a kind of checkmate.

Their knowledge of the Constitution, however, does not penetrate very far, and perhaps they are not as clever as they think. The Constitution is a marvelous document, and a reasonable interpretation of it means as well that no American can be forced to pour concrete. No American can be forced to deliver materials. No American can be forced to bid on a contract, to run conduit, dig a foundation, or join steel.

And a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution means that the firemen's, police, and restaurant workers' unions, among others, and the families of the September 11th dead, and anyone who would protect, sympathize with and honor them, are free to assemble, protest and picket at the site of the mosque that under the Constitution is free to be built.

A reasonable interpretation of the Constitution means that no American can be forced to cross a picket line in violation of conscience or even of mere preference. Who, in all decency, would cross a picket line manned by those whose kin were slaughtered—by the thousands—so terribly nearby? And who in all decency would cross such a line manned by the firemen, police and other emergency personnel who know every day that they may be called upon to give their lives in a second act?

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, says of those who with heartbreaking bravery went into the towers: "We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting."

Mr. Mayor, the firemen, the police, the EMTs and the paramedics who rushed into those buildings, many of them knowing that they would die there, did not do so to protect constitutional rights. They went often knowingly to their deaths to protect what the Constitution itself protects: people, flesh and blood, men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. Although you yourself may not know this, they did.

The choice is not between abandoning them or abandoning the Constitution, for although the liberties the Constitution guarantees sometimes put us at a disadvantage even of self-preservation, they also make it possible for 300 million Americans to prevail—reasonably, peacefully, and within the limits of the law—against provocations such as this.

They make it possible to prevent the construction of the mosque at this general location—with no objection whatsoever to, but rather warm encouragement of, its construction elsewhere—not by force or decree but by argument, persuasion, and peaceable assembly. These are rights that the Constitution guarantees as well, and clearly it is one's constitutional right to oppose the mosque, not to participate in the building of it, and to convince others of the same.

This small and symbolic crisis is not a test of constitutional liberties, for in regard to the question at hand the Constitution allows discretion. It is rather a test of how far America can be pushed, and America is not at all as powerless as it has been portrayed.

That is because the street in front of the mosque that the Constitution says can be built can be filled with people who can effectively protest it because the Constitution says that they are free. Those who do not fear to do so need only go there and stand upon their convictions, their beliefs, their reason, their laws, their history, and what is in their hearts.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt), "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt) and, most recently, "Digital Barbarism" (HarperCollins). Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.