I know that most people, even my fellow conservatives, think I’m kidding when I say that it mystifies me that the Democrats constitute a major political party. But I’m perfectly serious. I honestly don’t know why more people vote for Democrats than for Libertarians or vegetarians, for that matter. At least I know what those people want: namely, less meddling by the federal government and more salads on the dinner table.

But Democrats merely confuse me. For instance, they didn’t seem to mind at all when President Clinton sent troops to Somalia and Kosovo, although nobody really understood what interest we had in those two places, especially when all the leading Democrats at the time were insisting that regime change was overdue in Iraq. However, once President Bush removed Saddam Hussein, these same people started carrying on as if he had taken leave of his senses. All they kept saying was that Bush had ignored the U.N., whereas it was the Democrats who had ignored eight years worth of U.N. resolutions condemning Hussein’s atrocities and his violations of the 1991 peace agreement.

Then, like a tree filled with angry parrots, they all began squawking about Bush’s lack of an exit strategy, forgetting, it seems, that Truman saw to it that Japan was still under the control of the U.S. military for several years after the end of World War II, and that we still have troops in Germany, Korea and also, by the way, in Kosovo.

Now I will frankly admit that I fully understand why certain groups favor the Democrats. The answer, of course, comes down to entitlements. Which, in a less politically correct climate, would more honestly be called bribes. The most obvious recipients these days are blacks, Muslims and illegal aliens from Latin America. These entitlements come in a myriad of ways. Just a few that come to mind are affirmative action, foot baths for Islamics paid for with taxpayer dollars -- although the liberals are forever insisting that there be no overlap of church and state -- and what is virtually an open door policy where Latinos are concerned.

It isn’t really fair to blame this entirely on Democrats when most of us realize that Republican politicians also place their re-elections ahead of America’s best interests. The difference is that whereas all Democrats are guilty of this odious form of patronization, there are still some Republicans who have to answer to conservative constituencies, and can therefore retain at least some vestige of a backbone.

Recently, I heard a bit of news that would have made a man even more cynical than I -- H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain come readily to mind -- laugh out loud. I heard that there is a very real danger that a high percentage of our nation’s crops will not be harvested unless we somehow get a large number of Mexican farmhands to come north and pick them. So, it seems those 20 million hard-working aliens we kept hearing about apparently had no wish to work quite as hard as we’d been led to believe.

All of which brings us inevitably to the person the polls and pundits all insist will carry the banner for the Democrats in 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I realize that there are Republicans who are willing to let her move back into the White House unless the GOP nominates their guy -- be he Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul or Ronald Reagan’s ghost. Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s country! How can they overlook the fact that with three Supreme Court justices already in their 70s and John Paul Stevens being 87, Mrs. Clinton could easily cause far more mischief to this nation than her husband did when he placed Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench? Anybody who really cares about eminent domain, the Second Amendment, abortion, same sex marriages, capital punishment, civil rights, combating Islamic terrorism and dozens of other issues far more important than Monica Lewinsky, should think long and hard about sitting out the next election.

Finally, let me remind you all that Senator Clinton’s latest brainstorm is to give every baby born in the United States $5,000. Aside from the obvious fact that this would certainly encourage every Latin American who hasn’t already snuck in to get off his or her duff and get cracking, it would cost U.S. taxpayers an arm and a leg. Now I don’t know how many babies are born here every 12 months, but if, say, the number was just a million, Hillary is talking about five billion dollars. If the number of babies is five million, Hillary’s plan would run us $25,000,000,000. And of course, when you toss in her pet project, universal health care for everyone in the universe, you’re talking about really serious money.

Isn’t it strange that if multimillionaires Bill and Hillary simply decided to break open their own piggy bank and send the family of every newborn a five dollar bill as a baby gift, it would be an obvious infraction of the election laws? However, let Hillary propose giving away several billion dollars of our money, and it’s just politics -- liberal politics -- as usual.