So Now What?

OK, so now that "the worst" has happened, and the next incarnation of Jimmy Carter will take office in January, what's a conservative Republican to do?

First and foremost, let's stop whining. The election is over, the new President has been elected, and he's not a conservative.

Guess what? It didn't matter who won, he wasn't going to be anyway. That was the problem in a nutshell.

Post-election analysis of turnout numbers shows an interesting, if not entirely surprising, trend. Whle Democrats turned out in droves to vote for Barry O., Republicans largely yawned and stayed home. Republican turnout was down from previous Presidential election years, pretty much across the board.

We can speculate all we want about the reasons for this failure of the McCain campaign to turn out the base. His staffers are busily attempting to lay the blame at the feet of Sarah Palin, presumably figuring that the media has already done such a good job of trashing her reputation that they will have little to do but add more fuel to an already large fire.

Unfortunately, for them that is, I don't see this tactic going over well with the base. The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate was responsible for the single largest bounce in his poll numbers that he ever saw. No matter what the media did to her from that point on, she remained popular with the base, and handled everything they threw at her with grace and dignity. The same cannot be said for McCain himself.

While he certainly handled the media with grace after they turned on him, much more so than many would be able to muster, and for that I give him ample credit, he was consistently unable to appeal to the Republican base. His message was muddled throughout the campaign, and was consistent only in its inconsistency.

His response to the bailout mess only succeeded in angering everyone, supporters and opponents alike, and was practically indistinguisable from Obama's. As has been said often before, when given the choice between two Democrats, the electorate will choose the real one every time.

So we are left with the inevitable fallout, and the usual suspects loudly proclaiming the death of conservatism, much as they did after the defeat of Barry Goldwater. I note, however, that they never were able to explain the rise of Ronald Reagan. Ressurection, perhaps? But then, I thought leftists didn't believe in that sort of thing? ...

Any way you slice it, conservatisim has not died. The fact that the GOP took a much deserved beating for the past two election cycles has very little, if anything at all, to do with conservatism. It has, in fact, far more to do with the lack thereof. If the GOP were as loaded with "right-wing conservatives" as the leftists and their lapdogs in the so-called "mainstream" media like to pretend, we would not be unloading big spending, big government Republicans back into the private sector at the rate we currently are. Any true conservative knows intuitively that there is no such thing as a big spending, big government Republican. Any person who calls himself such is a liar or delusional.

So the lesson is, or at least should be, that it's way past time to get the GOP house in order. It's time to clean out the big tent. We need the general equivalent of a DI and a few First Sergeants to walk through said tent and "weed out" some of the "non-hackers" who do not pack the gear to be in the party of less government and lower spending. Save the PC nonsense for the Dems, they'll need it.

Which brings me to the other side of this point. The Dems are about to embark on at least two years of one party rule, in which they will have no more excuses, no more strawmen, no more anything. They have nothing left to hide behind. There is no more "Big Bad George" to blame everything on, no more "Republican Congress" to lay off their bets on.

No more.

They made a whole lot of promises, and now they have to deliver, with no fallback to rely on.

If we in the GOP are so stupid as to not capitalize on this golden opportunity, and not be standing in the doorway, ready to slam it behind them as they stumble and fall out of it after blowing it as badly as they are likely to, then we truly deserve every bit of what we'll get.

Media Calls It, Obama Has Won!

If they could get away with it, all the headlines would read "The Presidential election is already over, Barack Obama has won, conservatives Republicans can stay home!".

If there was ever any doubt about which way the so-called "mainstream" media leans politically, this election has killed it. Their incessant cheerleading for the Obama campaign, coupled with their never ending attacks on McCain-Palin, has now vaulted them into permanent status as the public relations arm of the Democratic Party.

Sen. Obama has insisted that he wants to talk about "the issues". OK then. I'd bet we all know that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is pregnant, right? And that there is an investigation into Gov. Palin's supposed "abuse of power" for firing AK State Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. Gov. Palin says she fired him due to incompatabilities and job performance issues, but the press claims it was because he refused to fire a trooper who had been married to Gov. Palin's sister. Nowhere does the press mention that this trooper has been accused of drinking on duty, unlawfuly discharging his firearm, and tasering his 10-year old stepson. But be that as it may, we have all heard about these crucial issues relating to Gov. Palin's ability to be Vice-President, yes?

Then there are the questions about Sen. Obama's relationship with Franklin Raines, CEO of the government chartered mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Mr. Raines was accused of "cooking the books", which translates to using fraudulent practices to hide corporate losses, primarily to keep paying himself and his fellow executives large salaries and bonuses. Mr. Raines was considered an economic adviser to the Obama campaign, until the news came out that he was going to be grilled by congressional investigators for his role in the mortgage crisis (broken, in all fairness, by the Washington Post).

Then, of course, there is the relationship Sen. Obama has with William Ayers, the former leader of the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist group responsible for several bombings in the sixties and seventies. Sen. Obama claims that he knows Mr. Ayers only casually, and that he has no involvement in the Obama Presidential campaign. However, Sen. Obama conveniently neglects to mention the meet and greet that Mr. Ayers held at his home for Obama's first campaign for the IL state Senate. Funny how that works, huh? Plus, all that bombing stuff happened when Sen. Obama was eight years old. I wonder if that excuse would work if John McCain said he was hanging out with Klan leaders? After all, all that lynching stuff happened so long ago ...

I won't even bother to get into Tony Rezko, Revs. Wright and Pfleger, ACORN, etc. Do I really need to?

The long and the short of it is, how much do you hear about Sen. Obama's "little problems" in the "mainstream" media? They get a mention here and there, sure, when they can squeeze it in, at the bottom of the page, if they have enough room after trumpeting Sarah Palin's latest made-up gaffe ("Gee, Katie Couric asked Gov. Palin if she knew what color hair the Queen of England's cat had, and she didn't know!!!!"), or if they can find the space when they're done screaming about how John McCain's economic plans will steal money from the middle class, give tax breaks to big oil, and put senior citizens out on the street. Almost sounds like a Barack Obama campaign commercial, doesn't it?

And therein lies the problem.

If you or I did that, we'd be violating campaign finance laws. Laws that Sen. McCain, in a breathtaking display of his own naivete, did yeoman's work to pass. Perhaps he actually believed that they wouldn't be used against him?

Boy, that sure worked out well, didn't it?

Whatever led us to this eventuality, we are now faced with the reality of the situation. All the poll numbers tell us that Sen. Obama, with all of his socialist policies, from government control of the economy down to federal repeal of state concealed weapons laws, is going to be our next President. The media is touting every one of these polls that they can find, as well as dredging up every negative McCain-Palin story they can dust off or invent, and using them to convince the conservative voting base to stay home.

Let's face it, if they do their job, they win, and we lose The Clinton years will look like a garden party by comparison.

I know a lot of folks don't think McCain is the best choice for conservatives. I'm one of them. But given the alternative, he's the only choice. So, for the sake of your country, get out there and vote.

If you don't, you will have no one but yourselves to blame for what happens next.

Whatever happened to the GOP?

Weren't we supposed to be the party of "fiscal responsibility"? And how, exactly, is dumping $700 billion in taxpayer money down the rat hole an example of "fiscal responsibility"? Sounds more like an homage to FDR ...

For a short while, it may have seemed like there might have been some hope for the perennial pork addicts in DC. The House had voted this monstrosity down, it looked like the will of the overwhelming majority of the people might actually prevail, and those in the markets who most assuredly deserved what was coming to them would get it.

But no.

Those of us who "do politics" could have told you this was coming. As soon as we started hearing politicians who cast "No" votes explain themselves by saying "If the bill only had [insert pet spending desires here] in it ...", we knew the deal to change their vote was practically done already. It was just a question of ironing out the details. So the "sudden" change of heart at the end of the week was no surprise to us.

So now that we have cast ourselves into this pit, and given the feds the green light to buy up a good chunk of the so-called "free market" with our money, what do we, the GOP voting base, do now?

Do we let them get away with it? Do we keep voting for the turncoat vote changers, rewarding them for their treachery, knowing that the alternative is worse, and knowing that they know it too? Do we stay home on 11/4, leaving the fate of our nation to others, and take a "bye" on the whole thing, thus leaving the practical outcome to be the same? Do we vote for the party of "change", given their even more socialist track record, and plummet the country even deeper into the abyss? Do we vote third party, and effectively toss our vote in the trash, knowing that no third party will ever garner enough votes to make a difference?

I welcome suggestions ...