By Christopher G. Adamo

It has been a week of upheaval on several fronts. And in its wake, the GOP stands to gain significant ground with the voting population, but only if it can properly depict current happenings against the backdrop of traditional Republican principle.

By far the most horrendous occurrence was the mass murder of thirty-two students and professors at Virginia Tech by lone gunman Cho Seung-Hui. Certainly, no decent individual should be attempting to make political hay of any sort out of the unfathomable carnage and brutality that fell upon that institution. Rather, all respectable Republicans should be loudly decrying the shameless liberal effort to do just that.

Almost exactly twelve years prior to the Virginia Tech shootings, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb at the Alfred Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 innocent men, women, and children.

The collapsing rubble from the building had hardly settled on its victims before then President Bill Clinton was in front of the cameras, almost gleefully going through a “laundry list” of political opponents on whom he disgracefully sought to fix blame for the disaster. Upon his re-election in 1996, he actually credited the Oklahoma City bombing as the “turning point” of his previously beleaguered first term in office.

In a similarly despicable manner, the death tolls had not yet reached their awful finality at Virginia Tech last week before all of the usual liberal mouthpieces in the media were venting their diatribe against gun ownership. Clearly they saw little real tragedy in the occurrence and no value in the humanity represented by those numbers other than their use as a political tool

In the liberal world, the event might prove invaluable in furthering an agenda of disarming Americans, thus making everyone as vulnerable to any lone crazy as were the hapless students and teachers at Virginia Tech.

Official Republican response should certainly not be to answer in kind, by sidetracking the entire situation onto a debate about gun ownership, though the facts and history clearly bear in their favor. Instead, they ought to relentlessly pound the point that those on the left perceive no situation, regardless of how devastating it is to their fellow Americans, as anything other than fodder for their insatiable political appetite.

On another front, the Supreme Court finally opted to act within the Constitutional framework which should be its standard realm. In the “Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood” decision, it sustained a 2003 ban on the gruesome procedure known as “partial-birth” abortion.

To nobody’s great surprise, liberals have ever since been howling about the injustice of protecting perfectly healthy and viable unborn children from brutal slaughter, and allowing them the gift of life, since by doing so their mothers may face inconvenience and adversity.

Nevertheless, a decisive majority of Americans recognize this procedure for what it is, and abhor it as such. As a result, liberal efforts to instill panic about the “loss of women’s rights,” and thereby rally the people to their party and their candidates will ultimately backfire on the Democrats, but only if confronted by a resolved and unshakeable Republican willingness to stand by the decision.

A Republican Party that remains firm on the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (with “life” listed first for obvious reasons) could use this occasion to loudly trumpet the inherent contrast that exists between itself and the Democrats.

It is just such a clear distinction that has consistently benefited Republican electoral prospects in recent decades. And, despite various media “spins,” on the situation, it was the very lack of such defining differences that spelled doom for Republican prospects last November.

Elsewhere, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-NV) once again sought to destroy the morale of American military personnel, and indeed all Americans who recognize the unavoidable nature of the war on Islamic terrorism. In a display of unswerving devotion to his party’s anti-war/anti-America base, Reid flatly asserted that the war in Iraq “is lost.”

In his April 24 column, commentator David Limbaugh presciently asks how the Democrats “would behave differently if they were trying to dispirit our troops and embolden the enemy.” Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anything more effective that an Al-Qaeda leader might offer the insurgents to best inspire them to persevere in their efforts to drive the United States out of Iraq.

With the 2008 Presidential campaign season looming, Republicans stand to make great gains as a result of this pattern of abominable liberal behavior. Yet it is critical to this effort that they remain loyal to those things that bolstered the conservative wing of the party. Only by so doing can they unmistakably define themselves as a clear alternative to the increasing liberal tilt of the Democrats.

Among the chief contenders for the White House, this contrast would be best borne, by far, by former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson. Of those with a large current showing in the polls, only Thompson can highlight his own past conservatism with no excuses or back peddling. Thompson merely needs to loudly proclaim the things for which he has stood and allow the opposition, in all of its hysteria, to make his case for him.

Rudy Guiliani, on the other hand, finds himself on the wrong side of two of the three currently dominating controversies, having staunchly supported both partial-birth abortion and gun control throughout his political life.

Being far too entrenched as a liberal, Guiliani amazingly seeks to appeal to conservative America on the basis that, unlike those who shift to the right for electability purposes, he remains committed to his liberal mindset. In essence, conservative America is asked to accept the absurd notion that Rudy’s unwavering devotion to such defining principles of liberalism somehow make him less of a liberal than those who waffle and pander.

Ultimately, this strategy promises to be no more convincing to the voting public than Hillary and her latest bumbling foray into “Ebonics.”

With Hillary or Obama the likely Democrat nominee, and in the face of the stark realities currently facing America, a great opportunity presents itself to the GOP. But the party can only hope to reap any political gain by remaining steadfast in its conservatism.