John McCain lost the presidential election last week, or more importantly Barack Obama ended up winning the battle for the White House.
Though I voted for McCain, I do recognize the historical significance of an African-American president in office and will not use this column to rail against the idea of "spreading the wealth" or anything of that nature.
However, I am going to take this opportunity to espouse from my conservative pulpit on what went wrong with McCain's campaign and what the GOP can learn from the mistakes they made in regard to it.
Let's start with the most evident, shall we? Having to formerly restrain my thoughts about Sarah Palin was quite the pain, and John McCain's VP pick was not only ignorant but a waste of donors' money to the Republican National Committee. Of course I don't place the blame on McCain for this when it seems he hardly knew the woman he was running with. He already had the support of the religious right; it just didn't make sense for him to pander to that sect of the Republican Party anymore than he already had.
Even worse is that he gave the media a new "face" of Republicana to latch on to and label as conservative a la our infamous Commander-In-Chief. Frankly I pray she doesn't come near executive office or happen to wander much farther from Wasilla; Washington, or more importantly Republicans don't want her and have no need for her on the national level.
Now that I've gotten perhaps the biggest peeve off my chest, it's time to get back to the economy -- something the McCain campaign acted like it knew nothing about. By the time the Republican nominee temporarily suspended his time on the trail to work on a bill in Washington, I was wishing Romney were in his stead. Abandoning the election to work on a bill that didn't even end up getting passed was foolhardy, and the American public saw it as behavior that was erratic instead of presidential, letting more moderates fall by the wayside to a veritable cult of personality.
But again I don't blame this on John McCain himself, rather those who were advising him. A year ago he was absolutely the maverick senator from Arizona, but along the campaign trail he'd transformed into some gross caricature who let the people know that they were his friends 30 seconds in to every speech.
So my friends, or my enemies depending on your general reaction (though I wish you'd keep an open mind), find solace in the fact that all hope is not lost with the 2008 presidential election; in fact, now is the time for our party to set a staunch agenda for, take a deep breath, reform for the conservative movement. With the Bush Administration being shown the door in January and Congress within their grasp, the Democrats will no longer have anyone to blame but themselves.
We've watched all these inevitable events unfold before our very eyes as Virginia turned blue; yet I still sense there's going to be a great deal of hesitation before the Republican party is going to figure out where to go next. This can be attributed to the idea that in prioritizing issues to settle on, the end decision is going to rest on the economy, and such a decision will no doubt act as an isolating factor to social conservatives.
I dare say that instead of building a platform against abortion, gay marriage and assisted suicide we get a handle on this recession (yes, the "r" word has been uttered) and build a platform on the foundation of lowering taxes, pushing a free-market economy in these hard times and developing our infrastructure capabilities domestically.
Is it unreasonable to think these things should be pushed on the Republican agenda? Absolutely not. During the election season all I could hear from campaign commercials is what we were against, how we were going to be run into the ground by a socialist, anti-life charisma machine, but we can't be hurting any more than we are right now under the neo-conservative philosophy of the post Sept. 11 Bush Administration.
I'm not asking my fellow conservatives out there to abandon the fight in Washington, to roll over and let the Democrats do as they please. Instead I'm saying we need to make a return to our core fiscal policy first and foremost and convince the American people that we hear their troubles and have a drafted solution. The good fight was fought in 2008, and we lost. Now is the time to push past that for a new and stronger age of conservatism in America.
In conceding the race to President-elect Obama, Senator McCain said, "Americans never quit. We never surrender," and now is the time to push such an idea onto Capitol Hill -- to fix (not bail out) the economy, to truly reach across the aisle for the good of the American people and our party.
Though the Republicans may have had a bum election year, I pray it will also mark a turning point for conservatism in America. If we can remember what it truly means to be a "conservative" in America, then the next evolution is coming.