I don't care how many times I hear it, I refuse to believe that significant numbers of conservatives will stay home in November and thereby assist the Democratic Party to regain control of Congress.

Democrats and the Old Media have been working hard to create this perception for several months, citing poll after poll to support their claims. It reminds me of the exit poll manipulation orchestrated by the Old Media and Democrat operatives in 2004 to create the GOP-deflating perception that John Kerry was winning big.

But with the unveiling of the Foley scandal, there is an even bigger spring to their step -- kind of like their perverse, gleeful reaction to problems with the delayed federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

Before Foley I gave conservatives more credit than to believe they would sit this election out over their disillusionment with Republicans concerning immigration and domestic spending. My confidence remains after Foley as well, despite push polling and other techniques designed to discourage conservative turnout.

Conservatives are generally rational creatures and sophisticated enough to understand that the national interest will not be served by turning national security over to a party wholly incapable of safeguarding it for the sake of punishing Republicans.

To the argument of some conservatives that losing the election will result in the nation eventually returning to its conservative roots, I say "nonsense." We can't afford the luxury, during time of war and incalculable threats to our national security, our culture, our freedom and our sovereignty, of taking our ball and going home for a few critical years.

I do not believe conservatives will deliver control to the party of tax and spend because Republicans haven't done enough to curb domestic spending. My assessment is reinforced by news that the Bush tax cuts have unleashed a robust economy and explosive federal revenues that have reduced the deficit to 2 percent of GDP, lower than the 2.7 percent average of the last 40 years.

I don't believe conservatives will conspire to assign control over immigration to the wide-open border Democrats, notwithstanding the Republicans' tardy and so-far inadequate response to the immigration problem. My assessment is reinforced by news that Congress passed a measure to erect a 700-mile border fence. Conservative angst forced recalcitrant politicians to act. This is how you get results -- not by replacing a highly imperfect party with an incomparably egregious one.

And I especially don't believe social conservatives, because of their disappointment with Republicans over Foley, will turn to a militantly secular Democratic leadership to protect Washington pages from sexual predators. My assessment is reinforced by the immediate resignation of Foley and the Republican leadership's initiation of comprehensive investigations into the matter, promising full accountability for culpable Republicans.

My optimism that conservatives will not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good and stay home in November is further enhanced by Democrats recently overplaying their hand on the Foley scandal.

Though they boasted for the longest time that they could trounce Republicans in November by a substantive debate on the issues, they've been studiously avoiding such a debate and resorting only to attacking Bush and scandalmongering. But now that they think the Foley affair is tainting the entire Republican Party, Nancy Pelosi has gotten cocky enough to unveil her agenda for the first 100 hours of her speakership.

She better hope that she hasn't triggered a true national debate on the issues and unwittingly nationalized the congressional elections, something the Republicans hadn't managed to pull off.

Can you imagine the Democrats winning a debate over national security when they've vigorously opposed almost every tool President Bush has tried to use to prosecute the war on terror? How would they gain from a true debate over Iraq, when Democrats still don't have a plan and can't even decide whether they favor withdrawal, "timetables" or "benchmarks"?

Can you imagine Democrats prevailing on a values debate where it would be emphasized that they actively promote the radical homosexual agenda and castigate one of the finest institutional exemplars of traditional values in our nation's history -- the Boy Scouts -- for their moral refusal to permit homosexuals to be scoutmasters? Does Nancy Pelosi truly support the National American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) or just proudly march in parades with them and receive 90 percent approval from their ACLU enablers? Inquiring minds surely want to know.

It is time for conservatives to ignore the Democrat and Old Media propaganda and vote in even greater numbers in November. If Democrats and the Old Media keep reporting that conservatives are going to stay home, they might be in store for the upset of their lives on Election Day -- just maybe.