Conservative Election Debrief

First, let me just say, we did the best we could with what we had, and we didn’t really have all that much to go on. John McCain has angered center-right members of the conservative base, of which I’m a part of, for years by supporting bills and agreements that would go directly against both conservatism and what this country, at its essence, stands for (see: McCain-Feingold and McCain-Lieberman) but, and this is a HUGE but, he was the best we had, or rather, he was what the people chose, so we ran with it. This principle, work with what you have, not what you want, is one of the things I love about this party.

The one ray of sunshine in this whole election was the plucky Sarah Palin who lit up the stage of the Republican National Convention and excited the base for the first time. We see life in the party again and have a rallying point for those of us who look for a return to the values of conservatism that have slowly been lost over the past few years.

So, what do we do? We have no marching orders and the RNC is strangely quiet, besides the infighting over Sara Palin. I would humbly suggest a few things to those conservatives out there that are reading this and wondering what to do next.

First, take a break. You read that right and yes, I’m being serious. After a loss like this it’s important to take some time and decompress from what’s happened. So, my advice to those who haven’t already is to take a few days off of politics completely. Don’t go to Drudge, don’t listen to talk radio or turn on the news. Don’t even talk about it. You’re not running away, you’re regrouping, though it wouldn’t hurt to have a snappy comeback or two ready for the snide and those who think themselves witty.

This time off will allow you to gather your thoughts, take a breath, evaluate what you did and what went wrong with what, and how best to get back on the horse. 

That is point two then – get back on the horse. Yea, we lost, but that does not mean that we are excused from making our case. Losing an election does not invalidate our points.  In other words, just because we lost doesn’t mean we’re wrong. President elect Barack Obama still spent twenty years in a racist church, still is friends with an unrepentant terrorist, still took money from a now prosecuted slumlord and still holds the most liberal voting record in congress. As commentator Jonah Goldberg said the night of the elections, ‘This election proves that Americans judge you by neither the color of your skin OR the content of your character.’

Fancy rhetoric aside, there will be many times when we disagree with President Obama over the course of the next four years, that goes without saying, but it is our job, our Right, to disagree when we see fit. Don’t be afraid to stand up and be counted among the dissenters, I know I’m not and I’ll stand proudly next to you, taking the gloves off and getting ready for the bare-knuckled brawl that’s ahead of us.

Finally, and I’m tempted to say ‘most importantly’, don’t be tempted to go to ad hominem (personal attacks) in regards to the President elect. The temptation is going to come when we begin to think about what liberals have been saying for the past 8 years. The whole, he’s-not-my-president-because-I-didn’t-vote-for-him shtick that has been playing over and over and over and over again, which is not, and never was, a valid attack for them, and it will never be a valid attack for us. We know how this system works – everybody votes, but there’s only one winner for everyone. Barack Obama IS my president – I didn’t vote for him, but because he won, he’s my president too, and I’ll be there hounding him every time he says something crazy or goes all radical lefty on us because it’s my right to criticize the leadership at every opportunity, not because of who he is but because of what he does.

No, that’s not something you’d ever hear from the left regarding George W. Bush and I can say, quite proudly in fact, that it’s one of the reasons I, and people like me, are not and can never be, liberals.

First off, spoiler warning for anyone that watches and haven't seen the episode of Doctor Who that aired May 2.

I love Doctor Who.  Probably the best show on television, sans those mini-series found on HBO (ex. John Adams, which was so increadibly good), involving fanciful characters, a powerfully performing main character and actor (David Tennant, who plays the Doctor, is probably one of the best actors of this generation) as well as engaging story and creative plot.

Also, I've noticed that there are within the episodes, whether diliberately or not, complex moral issues that are dealt with quite handily.

For the record, I don't mean to say that a 'complex moral issue' is a so-called 'grey area' of morality.  Indeed, if such grey areas exist, which I'm not discussing at this point, they only exist because we have knowledge of what White and Black is.  Indeed, if we had no idea of what true 'Good' and 'Evil' really is, objectively, then these so called 'grey areas' wouldn't exist in the first place because there would be no set of moral issues in conflict.

To the point, this last episode finds the Doctor and his companion at Pompeii the day before the volcano erupts and Pompeii dissapears off the map.  However, they discover that within Pompeii is a race of alien creatures (bare with me) that have created a device that would convert the population of the world into creatures like them, essentially killing off humanity.  In order to prevent this, the Doctor must reverse the device, saving the world but then destroying Pompeii, killing over 20,000 in the blast, as history says.  The choice - kill Pompeii or let the world die.

Aren't you glad you stuck with it?

Of course, the Doctor makes the choice and destroys Pompeii, thereby saving the world.

Now, I highly doubt that anyone would say that he made the wrong choice - indeed, as awful as it is to say, the needs of the many usually outweigh the needs of the few, or, to put it another way, when faced with a moral choice, even a particularly difficult or unthinkable moral choice, one should choose the option that causes the most good, or is the least amount of bad.  This sounds like a bunch of relativistic hogwash, but when faced with the specifics the choice becomes obvious.  Which is the most moral - killing 1 or killing 100?  One might say that since they both involve death that they are equally evil.  I am not one of these.  Indeed, if the killing of 1 would save the lives of 100, or if by inaction the 100 would die if one did not kill the 1, then the killing of the 1 would then be the most moral.

Sounds awful I know.  Never said this was a clear, cut and dried issue.

There are multiple applications, however, to this idea.  One could say that making the difficult but nessesary choice is what makes us moral, in our choice to bear the weight of moral recrimination if only to save others.  I would say that this is what 
our US Soldiers, Airmen and Marines are doing over in Iraq right now.  They shoulder the burden for us so that we can continue on with
our lives, confident in our security and safety.  

I would also say that the same applies to us today, in a small way.  The principle of choosing the lesser of two evils can easily be applied to this current election.

We have less then ideal choices on either side: on the Dem side there's Hillary Clinton, the enemy we know, one could say.  There's very little about Hillary that we are not aware of.  Whether it's politics, family life or personal friends, we know a lot about her given her time in the White House.  

Next, we have Barak Obama, whom we know less about.  Indeed, the man, as far as what he's said about things, is essentially a blank slate.  All we know about him is the company he keeps (Ayers, Dorn, Wright and Rezko), his voting record (one of the most left in the senate), his wife (a radical leftist) and a questionare that he filled out in 2005, once again showing him to be an extremely left candidate.

Finally, on the Right, we have John McCain.  War Hero, man of the Right... sorta... and respected senator... mostly.  Once again, a candidate that we know - his possitions are well known on near every issue and the one's that we don't know about, he's willing to talk about, unlike the Dahli Obama.  Even Hillary mixed it up on O'Reilly and did herself no harm at all in answering his questions directly.  

The point?

Many prominant conservatives have claimed that they would not Vote for John McCain.  Truthfully, I can sympathize - when Romney dropped out, whom I was supporting, I said much the same thing.  However, the Doctor Who Delema rears it's ugly head.  Obama would be a nightmare for the country with his uber leftist politics and lack of straight answers, as well as his appearant lack of judgement in regards to others views about America (see: the Rev. Wright and Ayers/Dorn).  This is giving him the bennefit of the doubt as I'm not assuming for a moment that he agrees with their anti-American rantings.

Hillary would be... well... not as bad as Obama, but her HillaryCare health care idea would bankrupt the nation and, quite frankly, does anyone really want another 4 or 8 years of Bill anyware near the Oval Office?  I mean, honestly?

So, we're left with John McCain, a Semi-conservative (closer to moderate) war hero who's policy choices have left us wanting, who's given conservatives the finger more the once (figuratively, of course), but, has a better record on defence then any of the Dems, has a better fiscal policy then the Dems and has said that he'd appoint constructionist judges to the court - the antithesis to the Dems.  

If the lesser of two evils (or three, in this case) is the right moral choice, then isn't the choice of who to vote for in November obvious?