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The Day After
by Steve White

First, congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. He will be the 44th president of the United States. His life is a remarkable journey and a testament to how far America has come. We're a fair, decent, tolerant, open-minded nation, and once again we demonstrate the old adage that "anyone can become President."

President Obama will deserve our support when he's right and our loyal opposition when he's wrong. Unlike some Democrats four and eight years ago, there will be no derogatory, childish name-calling from us conservatives. It was unseemly when the Democrats attacked George Bush they way they did, and it would be just as unseemly for us to do so now. We won't file for impeachment the first day Barack Obama is in office. We won't insult his intelligence. We will not pursue idiotic conspiracy theories.

The Democrats sounded insane over the last eight years and somehow got away with it. Republicans sounded insane in the later part of the 1990s and managed to get away with it.

Republicans won't be so lucky in the future. So we won't act insane. There cannot and must not be an 'Obama Derangement Syndrome'.

President Obama is going to need a loyal opposition. Joe Biden was both right and wrong when he said that "Obama would be tested." That's absolutely correct, but it will not be President Obama who will be tested, it will be America that is tested. If we waver then we, not just he, will flunk that test, and we'll be worse off because of it. America and American lives will be on the line. So when the challenge comes, we are the loyal opposition.

Let's be clear: we conservatives will NEVER do what the Democrats did to our country over Iraq. We will NEVER try to make our country lose a war just to gain political advantage. Again, Democrats somehow got away with this, but we would never be able to do so, because it would dishonor us. Honor is important in a way that it has never been important to a Charlie Schumer or a Rahm Emanuel. We need to preserve ours.

America did not reject conservative principles so much as it rejected much of the last eight years. George Bush, an honorable man, got a number of things right and a number of things wrong. Our country has failed to recognize the former and has instead focused on the latter. It's strange in a way: despite all the caterwauling America is wealthier today than in 2000. We're considerably safer. Unemployment is the same, poverty has trended downwards, and the poor still live better in America than just about anywhere else in the world. Our culture is wonderfully diverse and our people can, within very wide limits, choose how they wish to live.

So for all the claims about how bad America is, it is still a marvelous country full of opportunity. Just ask Barack Obama.

So what do we do?

We stop fighting the last war. The hoary joke applies: when in a hole, stop digging.

Conservatives must advance ideas. John McCain, an honorable and noble man, has clearly demonstrated that simply running a good soldier and decent American is not sufficient to win a national election. Republicans must recognize that it can no longer nominate the next man (or woman) who is considered to be 'due'. We must put forward ideas and principles to which the country will respond, we must do the hard political work to set the stage for those ideas, and we must advance as our leaders those who subscribe to and will fight for these ideas. We did that in the early 1990s and won a great political victory in 1994.

We then spent the next twelve years giving all that away by focusing on personalities, political chicanery and Clinton derangement syndrome. We bought into Karl Rove's plans on how to divide the electorate. We allowed K Street to buy us and once again, the world is less forgiving of us than with Democrats when we allow ourselves to be bought.

Advance ideas. Today is not the today to speculate on who will be nominated in 2012. Today and the coming days are a time to listen to what Americans think the challenges are, and to start considering how we'll answer those challenges. Put forward ideas and plans even if they're knocked down in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Start forcing the issues. Winston Churchill once said, "it is the duty of the opposition to oppose." Conservatives must use the power of ideas to oppose the Democrats.

Stand up to the media. The MSM has demonstrated itself to be an enemy to Republicans and conservatives. It is time we recognize and respond to that. It does no good to whine that the media is unfair. Instead, fight back: oppose the Fairness Doctrine. Cancel subscriptions. Let advertisers know (respectfully) that you no longer patronize that newspaper, that magazine, that evening news broadcast, that cable channel. If Barack Obama can talk about bankrupting the coal industry, we can talk about bankrupting the media, and our job is easier than his: the country needs coal. It doesn't need the CBS Evening News.

Make our own lives meaningful. There is more to life than politics, and the best revenge comes from living well. Obama and the Democrats will challenge that, for theirs is a philosophy that wants to take away what is personal. Orwell understood that in '1984'. We must not be content to scribble in a corner where we cannot be seen. We must be forward and happy in our commitment to those things that matter more than politics. Be successful, be enriching, be charitable, and let those Democrats who gloat and screech define their party. Ronald Reagan was successful because he was seen as a 'happy warrior.' There's a lesson there for us.

We will be a party of ideas. We will be a party of commitment. We will be a party of good cheer. We will be a party of successful people.

And then we'll see about those upcoming elections.
Posted by: Steve White 2008-11-05
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=254435