For Conservatives: Now What?

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Well, it's over for Sen. John McCain. Not only is Barack Hussein Obama President Elect, his electoral coattails increased the Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress. McCain, I’m sure, will take comfort in the fact that when he returns to the U.S. Senate, he can fulfill his Presidential campaign pledge to "reach across the aisle," helping the sizable Democratic majority in the good-old Republican spirit of bipartisan co-operation – “Country First,” and all that.

Democrats owe George W. Bush a tremendous debt of gratitude. He singlehandedly destroyed the Reagan coalition between conservative Republicans, Democratic social conservatives and over-taxed blue-collar workers. It was this coalition that gave Reagan an electoral landslide victory of 49 states to 1 in 1984. And the Gipper did this without once uttering bipartisan drivel.

Bush’s timid war plan, which toppled Saddam Husain but never properly occupied Iraq, allowed militias to form, foreign-fighters to infiltrate the country and Iraq’s clergy to write a constitution binding that nation to the yoke of totalitarian Islamic Sharia law. The good will Americans developed for Bush in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11, evaporated as the Iraq war dragged on (half a decade now), and Mr. Bush “stayed the course.”

Democrats should also be grateful for the Bush-devised $700 billion bailout plan. Why control the means of production when you can own the banks that lend the money to create the means of production?  President Bush put the nation's economy right where Obama, the Democrats and untold thousands of “community organizers” have always wanted it – right in their sweaty little hands.

In the years following this Republican electoral disaster, the media may begin to reassess George W's Presidency. They may rehabilitate him the way they did President Richard Nixon. "Sure Bush was a Republican," they will say, "but he expanded government health care, increased money for education and, more importantly, put the nation's engine of prosperity into the hands it so rightfully belongs -- the federal government's (a.k.a. Rep. Barney Frank's)."

Once the former President’s ghostwritten memoir is published, he will make appearances on the talk show circuit where he'll be met with much applause. His “elder statesman” status may even land him a plumb appointment to a nanny-state commission on nationalizing health care or one providing bipartisan political cover for State Department initiatives to establish even more Middle Eastern Islamic Republics (as Bush did in Iraq). His country's economic, political and military future may not be bright, but George W's most certainly is.

Now the question for Republicans will be: “Is the purpose of the Republican Party to provide bipartisan cover for our dear Democratic "opponents," or, at long last, will we be a party that holds to the principles of limited government and individual liberty? Will we keep discredited bipartisan Republicans in “leadership" positions or replace these timid souls with men and women who stand tall when articulating the principles of enlightened partisan opposition to the Democratic nanny-state?”

If conservative Republicans continue to allow the soft, gooey bipartisan contingent of their party to remain in authority – due to a foolish sense of loyalty -- they have done nothing less than sign a suicide pact -- for their principles, their party and for their county. In the end, fighting for principle is putting your “Country First.”

--Mr. Curmudgeon