There has been much talk lately about the need for the Republican presidential nominee to move to the center.  This is a mistake.  The only way to beat Barack Obama is to oppose him rigorously, relentlessly, and without remorse.

This election needs a fiscal, foreign policy, and economic conservative.  The man to defeat Obama must present the nation a clear choice between further socialism under Obama's control or prosperity through economic freedom, but that's not all; he will need to show the world who Barack Obama is.

Americans may be inattentive, or even self-involved, but we are not idiots.  Anyone can see the almost three years of failed Obama governance and know that the meme which the legacy media is trying to sell is a lie.  Obama is not just a failure; he is a spectacular failure -- and it's not George Bush's fault, or that of an obstructionist Congress.

For the first two years of his presidency, Barack Obama had super-majorities in both houses of Congress.  That's 100% of 2 out of the 3 branches of government (Legislative, Judicial, and Executive).  He could have done anything he wanted -- immigration reform, tax increases for the 1%, or a stimulus twice as large.  He added $5 trillion to the national debt in less than three years; he could have doubled that, if he chose.

Instead, he gave us Dodd-Frank Financial Reform, which frankly reformed nothing, making it impossible for businesses to get loans and people to get mortgages, while making credit cards and bank accounts more expensive for everyone.  Does anyone remember free checking, or low-interest credit cards with no fee?  Well, the president fixed that for us.

He gave us ObamaCare, the means by which our government restricts care to the sick while making it more expensive for the healthy -- all while scaring business into constraining employment and hoarding cash, instead of hiring and investing.

Before the passage of ObamaCare, 80% of Americans were satisfied with their health insurance.  Yet Barack Obama felt the need to fix it.  Some have said that getting his name in the history books was more important to him than actually fixing what was broken.

He shut down the oil industry in the Gulf, and any fossil fuel development on land, off our coasts, or at sea, simply to raise the price of all energy to the point where his green energy dreams would be cost-effective.  Remember $2-a-gallon gasoline or home heating oil under $1?  It wasn't that long ago.  Barack Obama fixed that for us.

After suffering a Barack shellac in the 2010 midterms, the president still controls one and a half of the three branches of government, while the Republicans control but half of one branch, the House of Representatives.  Yet the president's message is not remorse for two years of dismal policy and economic disaster; it is that the Republicans have prevented him from solving the country's problems.  This is how he will run in 2012.

Americans, despite how "lazy" and "soft" Barack Obama believes us to be, can see how bad things are, and even though some may buy the president's lies, most are going to lay responsibility for the nation's woes right where it belongs: at Barack Obama's feet.

Obama's only concern, since losing the House last year, has been his own reelection.  The constant campaigning in Darth Vader's bus -- made in Canada because, despite blowing tens of billions of dollars on bailing out car companies, Obama couldn't find an American-made bus acceptable for a king -- his non-involvement in the Super-Committee's debt reduction negotiation, the delay of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the proposing of the American Jobs Act -- which is basically the same as the failed Stimulus, just half as big -- all display our president as a non-participant in the exercise of active governing, while fully immersed in his eternal reelection campaign.

Where does he go from here?  Straight for the jugular, I fear, because he needs to destroy those who dare to oppose.  What other option does he have with his record?

Barack Obama will fight dirty.  The nation needs a candidate who will do the same.  After all, anyone who thinks that one of Herman Cain's accusers, Sharon Bialek, living in the same building as David Axelrod is a coincidence is delusional.  Obama will run the most negative campaign in recent history.  There will be allegations of racism, of corruption, of incompetence.  The Republican nominee needs to understand that in order to beat someone at mud-wrestling, you must get in the mud.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil that "he who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster."  No truer words were ever written.

Yet to do battle with Mr. Obama, any candidate will have to become something of a monster, aggressive and unremitting, without pause or embarrassment.  Nothing should be off the table: Obama's associations with Bill Ayers, the former terrorist; his decades-long relationship with the race-baiting Jeremiah Wright, the religious zealot of "God damn America" fame; all the czars and disastrous nominations like Van Jones, an avowed "truther," and Elizabeth Warren, who takes credit for the moral underpinnings of the OWS crowd, and Craig Becker, Obama's recess appointment to the NLRB who is busy pushing through a pogrom of forced unionization and governmental control of industry by regulatory fiat, and Lisa Jackson, who as head of the EPA has made it her life's goal to destroy America's manufacturing, electrical generation, and fossil fuel industries, also through regulation, and the failed and incompetent Eric Holder, with his Fast and Furious program, where the administration sought to bolster support for gun control by deliberately arming Mexican drug cartels, resulting in hundreds of deaths in Mexico and one in America...as well as all the golf, all the vacations, the crony capitalism, the disregard for the Constitution.  On and on it goes, because Barack Obama has provided, in less than three years, plenty of ammunition to do battle against his most dismal presidency.

The Republican candidate cannot take the high road like John McCain and refuse to fight.  Barack Obama will not be constrained; he will use whatever he can against whoever is his opponent, without reservation, including every underhanded trick and lie at his disposal.  The legacy media will not only support him in this, but they will be complicit in his dirty politics.

While conservatism is a set of principles for economic governance, liberalism is a religion for world control.  Like any creed, it must be believed wholeheartedly.  Then, all else loses significance.  The rule of law, moral convention, and civility mean nothing to someone confident that he is on the side of what is right and just.  As long as such people are true to the liberal faith, no law or ethic need apply to their actions.

The Republicans have to understand that mindset and get dirty -- fight with both hands -- for this election will be a battle to the death for the nation, and perhaps the world.

Barack Obama is the ultimate of bullies.  Yet, like most bullies, it is the challenge he fears, the truth he despises.  The ultimate terror for Barack Obama is that the world will see who he really is: a petty man of little talent and few gifts.

The Republican candidate needs to show the world this truth.