Time to gird the ol’ loins, baby!
There is no time to lick wounds, point fingers, and wallow in post-election mud.
I’m getting a lot of moan-y, sad-face “What do we do now, Michelle?” e-mails.
What do we do now? We do what we’ve always done.
We stand up for our principles, as we always have — through Democrat administrations and Republican administrations, in bear markets or bull markets, in peacetime and wartime.
We stay positive and focused.
We keep the faith.
We do not apologize for our beliefs. We do not re-brand them, re-form them, or relinquish them. We defend them.
We pay respect to the office of the presidency. We count our blessings and recommit ourselves to our constitutional republic.
We gird our loins, to borrow a phrase from our Vice President-elect.
We lock and load our ideological ammunition.
We fight.
***
First assignment for fiscal conservatives in Washington:
1) Oppose the Democrats’ next stimulus boondoggle.
2) Oppose Obama’s windfall profits tax proposal.
3) Oppose new bailouts for states deep in debt.
4) Oppose new foreclosure prevention measures that will simply provide perverse incentives for borrowers to walk away and delay a needed market correction.
5) No more federal loan guarantees for corporations (especially in light of this.
It’s certainly been a more interesting election than we’ve seen in some time. On one hand, we’ve elected a mixed race president. And, while he’s not even close to being my choice of who I would’ve liked to be the first, overall I think it’s a positive thing. On the other hand, we’ve elected a crypto-Marxist to the highest office in the land, which is certainly a very, very bad thing that we’ve going to suffer with for years to come. Public financing for elections, I think, has just been dealt a death blow which I think is clearly a step in the wrong direction.
Public polls have again been proven to be ridiculous, with Obama winning the popular vote by 2% rather than the 8-12% that was predicted. The turnout predictions also appear to wildly off base. The number of PUMAs voting for McCain also looks to have been very wide of the mark, since sites like Hillbuzz were predicting something like 25-40% in PA would go against Obama.
It looks like the number of young voters coming out to vote was far lower than predicted as well. It certainly appears that the media really sold us a complete cock and bull story about Obama winning a landslide election led by a massive surge of young and African American voters. Just keep this in mind. Obama spent a billion dollars on his campaign. He had the media in his pocket to the point that they steadfastly refused to report anything negative about the guy. But, when all is said and done, half the country voted against Obama. Will he take that into consideration and try to lead from the center? I highly doubt it.
If you go back and look at the final popular vote numbers, they are in the 6% range. So the pollsters were not all that off.
If you are looking for a place to start, then start by looking into the mirror. Here’s a little secret: No one likes taxes, big government or excessive spending, not even Democrats! So why did you lose? Here are the reasons:
1. Sean Hannity
2. Sarah Palin
3. Religious Right-wing nuts that have hijacked your party
4. Bush
5. A completely disorganized campaign from Day 1
6. Your rejection of intellectualism (Brooks, Parker, Fukuyama) and a willingness to wear stupidity and mediocrity on your sleeves (Joe Six-Pack for VP??…..please)
7. Your willingness to use trivial but wedge issues (gay-marriage, abortion etc) to ratchet up the rhetoric and fire up your base (which is shrinking by the hour if you haven’t noticed)
Your core ideology is timeless but your party is pandering to a narrow base and is still stuck in the 20th century. You have to reconnect with the working middle-class, reject religious extremism, embrace social progress and change. Only then will you be able to make a comeback.
Chris, RINO’s in our party believe exactly as you. We let them be in charge, and look where it got us.
You’re just as wrong about the Republican party as you are that Obama will be some kind of “change”. He’s already drafting Bill Clinton’s cabinet.
If you want to know why we really lost, it’s because 7 million Republicans stayed home on Election Day because we did not nominate a real Republican as our candidate. Add in the credit crisis and the stock market falling apart and it would have been exceedingly difficult for any GOP caandidate to win. Besides, winning three presidentiual elections in a row is very rare.
The GOP neds to purge those who aren’t true small government conservatives, or at least marginalize them so they can’t really do much. We need to get back to our roots and become the party of Reagan again. This country is still a center/right country. The important thing to realize is that people didn’t vote for Obama because of his politics.
7. Your willingness to use trivial but wedge issues (gay-marriage, abortion etc) to ratchet up the rhetoric and fire up your base (which is shrinking by the hour if you haven’t noticed)
Funny how those “wedge issues” passed.