Reclaim Conservatism

I wanted to let the elections sink in before I said anything about, or do a long post about it.   I want to congratulate Obama for a splendid campaign.   He had the organization and the rhetoric that people heard and wanted to follow.   He stated focused and did not make many mistakes.   So I want to congratulate him and wish him luck.   Because whoever was going to be the President is stepping into a hornets nest of problems.   Not all Bush’s fault and not all Democrats fault.   It is the combination of stuff that has finally fallen on our economy, CRA, Greenspan lowering the interest rates too many times and a CONgress that failed to see what was coming because of vitriol going on both sides.   So, Obama I congratulate you and wish you luck,

But with that, I am not going to go along and agree with most of what you are doing.  I do not believe the Constitution says anywhere where you are suppose to “redistribute the wealth” and form a National Military Organization.    Also you do not tax the rich to bring the poor up, that is a false theory.  And it especially reckless in a time of recession.  I do recall that we have tried this before and we had The Great Depression.   it never worked then and will not work now.

Now to the GOP.   or what is left of what the Republican Party stood for.   The GOP has become corrupted with politicians and hacks that are not out for the best interest of the country, but only in it for themselves.   What ever happened to “Limited Government”, “Individualism”, and “Personal Freedoms”?????   When the GOP won the CONgress in 1994, they came in with a plan, but by the time Bush came into power, the GOP had forgotten that Contract With America, and became what they despised, drunken sailors that did not find pork or lobbyists that they did not like.  What happened to the Party of Reagan???    There are only a few left that believe in anything in the Contract With America.   Most have been poisoned by greed and The Washington Elite.

The past few days I have been reading some posts of my friends and fellow conservatives online.  There are many great ideas on how the GOP can get back on track.  Get back to the basics of what got them in power in 1994.  Conservatism did not loose on election day, Republicans lost on elections day.  Many conservative ballot measures were
passed and many Liberal ballots measures were voted down.    So it is not Conservatism that lost, it was the GOP.  So we conservatives should not give up all hope.

Guest poster at Flopping Aces, Wisdom has a 7 point plan that I agree with:

1. We need to self police and purge our Party of the corruption that seeped into the ranks during our years of power. From the halls of Congress, to the living rooms where local Party officials meet, the people who have used political power to advance personal prosperity, illegally and unethically, need to be stripped from their positions of leadership, and censured or prosecuted as the situations dictate. Sarah Palin set a standard for us in how she hit hard against entrenched corruption in Alaska, and we would do well to heed her example.
2. We need to go back to the basics of what makes our Party great. We need to embrace the foundations of our party’s history, such as constitutional constructionism, federalism, individual responsibility, and conservative fiscal policy. We need cast off this idea that it is our job to include all points of view in our Party, and instead set a steadfast standard that others can look up to and join with as they see and understand the superiority of the Conservative Republican Platform.
3. We need to learn from the success of the Democratic Party and use their methods to teach conservative values from the bottom up. We need to become ‘community organizers’ in our own right, and work hard to make sure that our values are taught in our preschools, in our grade schools, our middle schools, our high schools, and ultimately in our colleges and our universities. We need to create our own educational programs to counter the liberal programs that have become entrenched in the liberal controlled education systems. We need to promote and support conservative community programs and charities, and take advantage of any chance to promote conservative social efforts wherever we see them.
4. We have to find strong, honest, charismatic, conservative leaders to take control of the current Republican Caucus in Congress. We cannot afford to have congressional leaders who cannot relate to the national constituency. The chosen leaders have to be able to articulate our congressional objectives, and communicate their importance to the American people. A Democratic majority can stonewall a Republican minority, but they cannot stand against a resolute American public that demands results. When the inevitable political infighting begins in the now too powerful Democratic Party, a calm, steadfast Republican minority can show America what leadership should look like.
5. We have to recruit, promote, and support good conservative leaders at all levels of local and statewide government. The first, and most important, place we can do this is on school boards nationwide. If we can shift the political balance of our education system, we can begin to take the control of our classrooms out of the hands of the far left.
6. We have to recruit, promote, support good conservative candidates to challenge the Democrats for control of Congress in 2010. The Democrats have two years ahead where they will have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, and we can take advantage of those two years to recruit candidates and build successful campaigns. The political infighting of the Democratic Party is inevitable, and a unified Republican Party can take advantage of that to make huge gains in congressional seats.
7. We have to find a great, young, ambitious, charismatic, conservative leader, who has a bulletproof past, who has a grand vision for our nation, to lead our party to victory in the 2012 Presidential race. I know this is asking a lot, but our Party needs a young Ronald Reagan — male, female, black, white, latino — it doesn’t make a difference. If we put forth anything less, then we will be trying again in 2016.

Night Twister at The Minority Report has got some other good Ideas:

We need new leadership for the Republican National Committee. We need someone that can present our conservative ideas to the public in a way that they can understand. Small government. Fiscal and personal responsibility. Strong, but wise defense policies. This is what is important to the core of our nation. There is such a man that can do this. He ran in our Presidential primaries, but was unsuccessful mostly due to his inability to put together a functional campaign strategy. Most everyone agreed he had the best and right ideas to lead our nation forward, but simply wasn’t the person for that job.  This man is Fred Dalton Thompson.
…

We need new leadership in the House and Senate. I’ll be the first to agree that we’ve been our own worst enemy in Congress over the past eight years, and the current leaders inherited a good portion of this mess. That said, we’ve hired them to do a job, and while I was willing to let them slide in 2006, they had two years to stop the bleeding and were unable to do so. They’ve had no voice. It doesn’t matter that the MSM has been screaming liberal talking points all along. They know the lay of the land. They’ve got to find a way to get our voice out in such a way that people will hear it, or they need to get out of the way and let others give it a chance. What they’re doing now isn’t working.

Steven Den Beste at Chizumatic also has some very good thoughts:

1. It is no longer possible for anyone to deny that the MSM is heavily biased. The MSM have been biased for decades but managed an illusion of fairness. That is no longer possible; the MSM have squandered their credibility during this campaign. They’ll never get that credibility back again.

2. Since the Democrats got nearly everything they hoped for in this campaign, they’ll have no excuses and will have to produce. They’ll have to reveal their true agenda — or else make clear that they don’t really have any beyond gaining power.

3. Every few decades the American people have to be reminded that peace only comes with strength. The next four years will be this generation’s lesson.

Leslie Carbone also has nail the head on this one:

One of the truest adages in politics–Bad things happen to Republicans when conservatives are unhappy–came true again last night.

….

Voters didn’t reject Republicans because they reject conservatism; voters rejected Republicans because they no longer trust Republicans to uphold conservatism.  And there’s no reason why they should.

I know that there are many other great posts and thought out there.  But I do not want to just cut and paste a whole bunch of blog posts here.    What I want is for us to take back the GOP from the political hacks that have ruined the Republican name.  These people have left Conservatism behind and tried to change the Republinan Party to a Democrat Lite Party.   We do not want that, we want the Republicans to be Conservatives, not Moderate Mavericks.    And this is not to poke at McCain, he is a great man and a true American Hero, but he was no Conservative.  he did have Conservastive tendencies, but he was more a less a Centrist.

We need to start now and not rest.   We need to see what the Democrats have done and not exactly emulate them, but learn how to get the message to the average Joe better.   Not just bitch and moan about Obama, but to try and change the minds of the American Public.  Get them to listen and not just watch American Idol or Survivor, and not care what is going in Washington.

I know I do not have all the answers and probably never will.  But we as Conservatives need to unite and not point fingers at each other.   That will just tear us apart.   We need to join together and take back the Party of Reagan and Lincoln.

And if you have any good ideas leave them in the comments.  I really would like to hear what everyone has to say.