However, the Left has in the last 2 election cycles at least, successfully “triangulated” these ideas and co-opt so called, “values” issues. Which should tell us that the core ideas are winners with the American people, and that it’s the language we use, not the ideas that need changing. Not that any conservative worth his or her salt would change such core principles anyway.

For Example: In this last election, despite our last minute Joe the Plumber surge, Obama was able to convince voters that the idea of redistribution of wealth was fair – and therefore the morally right thing to do. Since this Socialist fallacy has long been preached in many religious corners, we even presented some of our evangelical friends with a moral dilemma. Should they vote on the issue of life (which wasn’t presented as a major issue in the campaign and where our charges against Obama seemed incongruent with his public perosona) or gay marriage (on which both candidates sounded the same) or economics, where our arguments sounded lame? Given the October surprise economic meltdown, how would we expect them to vote? Given the public perception of Republicans and conservatives, why wouldn’t we expect many of them to stay home in disgust? And that, according to the numbers crunchers is part of what happened.

Conservatives and Republicans are losing their hold on evangelicals, while at the same time we are charicatured as one with the most outrageous elements of that particular voting bloc. In short, we’ve been Alinsky’d.

We conservatives need to recognize that because we have long been shut out of major media outlets and the schools, we are now speaking to an audience that is largely uneducated in facts and core principles that form the basis of our thinking and arguments. We therefore need to begin the long, slow process of re-educating the populace in facts and the core founding principles behind our ideas, lest we be forever shut out of the public discussion.

The media has been dressing up Obama as the next Abe Lincoln or the next FDR. I’m guessing that it won’t matter if in the next four years he proves himself to be more like Dick Nixon or Jimmy Carter, if the GOP doesn’t end this bickering between the social conservatives and the social liberals, Obama will easily slide to victory in 2012.

Obama ran one well-executed strategic campaign. McCain fumbled and lost face as much as I planned to vote for him.

You guys can’t complain about Biden–you have 4-8 years of material that will be delivered daily to your cyber doorstep. What you see is what you get. Give me a man who rams his shoes in his mouth for all the world to see over the warped serpents any day. Maybe a little anti-Irish-Catholic smug smog in the air ?

And KP will get around to writing that McCain et. al picked Palin because she is pretty hot as far as national female politicians go. She’ll get her talking points down over the next 4 years as well as W, GHWB, and RR. I’m okay with figure-heads. I’ll take any of those three over Slick Willie.

Palin will neutralize Hillary way longer than people expect. The GOP trotted her out at a good time. The election was all but lost. Palin offered some hope she could seduce us to swamp lust for security.

Biden is to Obama what Cheney has been to Bush with a better twist. Obama will be allowed to inspire while kept from going over the top. So far, it looks like he’s surrounding himself with fairly decent folks. Let’s pull in Hagel, Bob Kerry, James Webb, Colin Powell, maybe Kay Baily Hutchinson….leaving others to identify the blacks and latinos and a few more women. Keep Gates in for a good year or two.

Okay, things at the Fed and Treasury make me nervous

So, you don’t get to look at Palin everyday. Biden will keep us laughing and taken seriously. Michelle Obama and her girls will grow on us. Worse folks to have in our living rooms for next 4 years. We’ll be hunkering down anyway.

Could be worse. Kathleen is spot on. And Jonah surprised me with his whining…….

Note that the use of “gorillas” and “oogity-boogity” would be considered racist in almost any other context. But when you’re talking about conservative Christians, well alrighty then.

Phillipa, to address your question seriously: For starters, I think we can safely say that one thing that is *not* a solution is splitting the conservative coalition in half. I lean libertarian myself, but I don’t understand the desires that some libertarians have to want to throw social conservatives under the bus. They live under a delusion that if they do that, they can for a new coalition with the center-left. Trouble is, this recent election vividly demonstrated that there is no center left in America anymore — they’ve all either gone libertarian, neocon, or far left. (The Democratic Party spent decades trying to get rid of them, and they have succeeded.)

Libertarians and social conservatives need to realize that the reason William Buckley put together this coalition in the first place is because the two groups, unlike most coalitions in American politics, actually have complementary concerns and goals. Freedom is meaningless if there is no social order and no government to defend individual rights. Conversely, social order cannot exist when people are not free to solve their own problems or shape the government as they see fit.

Where, then, are your solutions?

Does anyone really care what Kathleen Parker has to say?