If you have followed my little blog you know that I mostly post about preaching and church life and ministry. Lately I’ve been a little distracted from that as the election was heating up and getting closer. But now you have it; this will be my final political post for the year and maybe for many years. Unless of course something truly dramatic takes place.
As I watched what was becoming obvious on election night, an Obama victory, my thoughts and emotions were all over the map. I really like what Mike Huckabee said in his post on the day after the election.
He was not my choice, but he will be my President and I will pray for him to lead this great nation with God’s help and grace. ..
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Our party will be back with strength, but tonight we should all celebrate the historic nature of this election and put our country ahead of our party. …
As disappointed as I am that we have lost the election, I can’t help but feel that many courageous leaders of the civil rights movement look down from heaven tonight with a smile that the day has come when a man is elected without regard to his color.
Nice tone. I do not fully agree with the last line, but am happy that we can elect a black man. I just wish we could elect a man and not really care what his color is. And I do hope that we will very soon be able to do the same with a woman, something this election showed is maybe harder to do, especially if the woman is conservative.
Moving Forward
Huck talked about how "our party will be back." Will that happen? I am no longer a Republican because of the abandonment of true conservatism by the majority of elected Republican officials. They are good at sounding like conservatives but when a true test of conservative ideals presented itself with the credit crisis and proposed bailout, the only solution offered by anyone in enough power to do anything about it was big government. As a result, the people of this country said, "If I’m going to get big government pushed down my throat, then at least I’m going to get a piece of the bailout pie." I believe that was the only message sent in this election. Tax cutting Democrats usually win when Republicans are not really conservatives. George Bush lost to Bill Clinton because we read his lips instead of his bill signing pen. He gave us new taxes and Clinton promised to cut them. So we read Bush’s lips and made him read ours: "No new term!" Then the joke was on us because Clinton’s promised tax cut turned into a tax increase. Two years latter Republicans ran as true conservatives and swept into power in stunning fashion thanks to the Newt Gingrich Contract With America. This year McCain suspended his campaign to fix the problem in Washington and then offered no truly conservative solutions like cutting the Capital Gains tax and doing away with Mark to Market policy that led to this mess. Instead he signed on to the big government solution. So, tax cutting Obama won handily. It didn’t hurt that he had more money and crisis that was manufactured by inept Democrats who blocked any reform of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac situation. But since it happened while Bush was in office and people don’t study the constitution anymore, people blamed Bush for the economy and everything else that went wrong in the last few years from Hurricane Katrina to high gas prices to the bailout solution offered by his Treasury secretary. The one good thing he has done is keep us safe for 7 years and as a thank you his party gets shown the door. And I think it might be just deserts for their big spending ways.
A friend send me an email last night saying basically we cannot count on Republicans to be the party of constitutional conservatism and pro-family ideals. So he gave me a link to the Constitution Party. That’s fine but they are so small an ineffectual that you wouldn’t even know the election was held yesterday if you went to their site. It would seem their web master went on vacation on Halloween. Other people like the Libertarian alternative. But they support gutting our military and freeing people to smoke weed like they kick back beers. I cannot support that. The American Conservative Party looks interesting but not so much that they can really draw much interest from more than a small group of disenfranchised conservatives like me.
So what do people like me do? I am a deeply religious, staunchly conservative, voter who feels like he has no real home. I could be persuaded back to my Republican roots if a few things happen.
Put Newt Gingrich in charge.
He is the only Republican, who seems to really get it, with any clout to lead the party. He is a fiscal and social conservative as well as an International policy conservative. He also has a world class strategic mind. After all it was his Contract With America that brought Republicans into power in Congress for the first time in decades.
Quit Promoting Big Spending
The Republican Party can now become the "balance the budget" party again. Block all big spending issues that come from the liberals in charge of the congress. Call for an end to government waste and mean it. Put front and center a plan to reform the huge, bloated bureaucracy that hampers our government.
Clean House
Get rid of the tired old limousine liberals (good bye Christopher Shays from Connecticut) in the party and get some fresh new 
faces like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Sarah Palin from Alaska or Michael Steele from Maryland. These are not the same faces people associate with the failed, feckless Republicans of the 21st Century. With new ideas and new approaches to the same old problems, these very effective new faces can have a huge impact on re-branding conservatism as the best alternative for America, even the "down and out" people of this country who have assumed they could never achieve power until this election. We should see Obama’s election as a great opportunity to put to bed some old problems we have had. Racism is no longer a real problem if a black man can be elected President.
These are just three things that could bring people like me back to the party and begin building a new, strong, conservative coalition again.
Truly Historic
Finally, as a person who has been deeply disturbed at the racism that I have seen in America, and especially in the church, I am thankful that our country can see past race and elect a black man. Now I just wish we could see past race and not really care that he is a black man. That will take a whole new kind of change that few in the elite circles of American division politics are really interested in healing.What do you think? And before we put too much stock in the idea that this was a huge shift in political ideology, remember that it was Obama’s centrist message that he so effectively communicated that will now be an albatross around his liberal neck. I spy a "no new taxes" moment coming soon from him if he doesn’t get those $500 checks in the mail to the poor, working "tax payers" of America very soon. I don’t know how he’s going to overcome these kinds of expectations (see the video of the woman certain she won’t have to worry about paying for gas or her mortgage).
This is just my post-election tirade. It helps to get this off my chest. Now back to preaching!
