Last Night's Election Postmortem

There is good news for Republicans in last night's results: Barack Obama failed to get a mandate for radical change. Despite polls showing him up by as many as 13 points on the eve of the election, Mr. Obama was able to garner barely 52 out of every one hundred votes cast.

This bare majority came only as Obama benefited from a near perfect storm of advantages that, had his message and policy proposals been more in line with the American people, should have seen a far more substantial tally for the now President-elect. Few would argue other than that Obama is one of the most charismatic figures and greatest orators of our time. This pose and prose was in contrast to his opponent, a man physically deformed by years of torture and oratorically on par with driftwood. John McCain is a great man, he was just never a good candidate.

In fact, McCain was a singularly bad candidate who, out of what I believe was a misguided sense of "statesmanship" and honor, refused to challenge his opponent on matters vital to his victory and, sadly, even more vital to the protection of this nation. McCain's failure to make Obama's twenty years at the knee of his mentor, Jeremiah Wright, a central issue of the campaign (and similar failures to make clear Obama's other nefarious collaborators) allowed Obama to sell with great charm and flowing rhetoric policies that sounded good but were, in reality, the very opposite of what he believes, spent his life promoting and will now seek to make the law of the land from his position as the most powerful man in the world.

Finally, the razor-thin margin of victory came only through the unprecedented and unconscionable wholesale rejection of even the pretense of journalistic standards and personal integrity from a rapidly dying Old Media that sees in Obama a chance to elevate their coideologist to power and, in turn, perhaps have their industry rescued by an Obama administration happy to stifle their competition in talk radio and the Internet.

The bottom line, however, is that the nation and the world is now stuck with a soon-to-be-President Obama. Further, some of the obstacles and challenges that allowed this to happen are only going to get worse in the next few years as the Democrats work to undermine free speech and place other barriers in the way of getting the truth to the people. This will likely start with the Pelosi-Reid Congress advancing the Orwellian-named "Fairness Doctrine" which, they hope, will destroy the voice of opposition in broadcast radio. Meanwhile, the Old Media, flush with the power of having elevated their idol to power, is not likely to return to the standards they rejected over the past many years. This media sees themselves as anointed and elite, their job not to report to the people but to control those "racists" and "dolts" who, to borrow a word from their leader, "cling" to their deepest beliefs and constitutional rights out of "bitterness" and bigotry, by parsing out information that elevates only those who think like they do to positions of power. Rapidly dwindling respect and circulation will not slow their efforts as their sense of elitism and disdain for their fellow Americans -- the folks of "Kansas" whom they see as having "something the matter" with them -- sees their efforts as a righteous crusade, one made only more fun and self-satisfying by the honors they bestow upon each other not for the greatness of their accomplishment but for the degree to which it services "the cause." To this group -- like their brethren in the Hollywood Hills -- the failure of their product is seen as a badge of honor for popular is the opposite of elite.

Still, we Republicans can take from the paltry advantage "won" by the Democrat Party standard bearer that America remains center-right and our return to governance in short time is very possible -- even likely. To regain the confidence of the people
we need to return to the message and policies that saw the American people elect us in the first place. Beliefs and policies that they support and share. Being Democrat-light out of a sense that the populace has moved left is a wholesale and dangerous misreading of this election. We will have more charismatic candidates down-the-line, we will redouble our efforts to get out a message doubly difficult to get out because of Democrat legislation likely to come, and, because we have the power of truth and right on our side, we can go into 2010 not dispirited but rejuvenated, not resigned but rededicated to our purpose and our cause, knowing that 2008 was not so much a mandate for the left but a wake-up call to the right.