Here's a post-election e-mail from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that produces scholarly analysis of political issues that ordinary folks like you and me can understand.
I keep telling everyone to keep their powder dry. Well, the Heritage Foundation is the armory where you can get all the ammo you need to fight for the conservative cause. Go to the Heritage Web Site and arm yourself for battle!
November 7, 2008| By Nathaniel Ward
What the election means
On Tuesday, American voters elected Senator Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States. His Democratic Party allies also realized substantial gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
In a column circulated nationwide, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner explains what this election means for conservatives.
An abiding belief in our country's greatness, tinged with optimism, has long been a cornerstone of conservatism. And Obama's been tacitly leaning toward conservative ideas since he became the Democratic nominee. Even though his record indicated he was the most liberal candidate in (at least) a generation, he ran as a conservative on major issues like taxes (promising to cut them), the military (vowing to add some 92,000 new troops) and energy (saying he'd at least consider offshore drilling).
"The problem," he continues,
is that both political parties have failed Americans
In recent years the Republican Party, which in Reagan's hands carried the conservative standard to new heights, lost its way. Federal spending now tops $25,000 per household annually, and the coming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs of 77 million retiring baby boomers threaten to add another $12,000 per household to the taxpayers' annual tab. Yet neither party offers a solution to the entitlement crisis or a real plan to cut spending.
And while "Republicans who have lost touch with their conservative roots are in trouble," Feulner argues, "conservatives are thriving," dominating the talk radio airwaves and expanding their online presence on sites like Townhall.com.
Still a center-right nation
Heritage Vice President Mike Franc made two key observations about the election results in a National Review Online symposium.
First, with the defeat of Republican moderates, "returning House Republicans will be more uniformly conservative. To the extent congressional Republicans plan to rediscover their inner conservative selves, this enhanced ideological uniformity will serve them well."
Secondly, and more importantly, Franc notes that "the exit polls, to the extent they can be believed, remind us once again that America remains a decisively right-of-center nation."
Liberal remains a dirty word. In fact, many more Americans continue to self-identify as conservative (34 percent) than as liberal (only 22 percent). Knowing this, successful Democratic candidates across the country used conservative rhetoric and themes to score points against their Republican opponents and win the hearts of voters. The Democrats' repeated refrain on behalf of middle class tax relief was but one of several such examples.
7 comments:
If those data are correct about the number of people who call themselves liberals and leftists, then you would not have been compelled to write this article.
Why?
Because Barack Hussein Obama would not have been elected.
Of course, there are those who call themselves conservative who rationalized not voting for McCain. They must feel full of themselves now.
And then there's the one in five Republicans who voted for George W. Bush last election who voted this election for Obama.
And then there's the two or three percent, whatever the real number is, of Republicans who just stayed at home.
Indeed, both parties have failed America.
IMO, the Democrats because they've become fascists and because they behave as slavemasters, especially for the black community and for not-so-economically-well-off people of any color. Also, they're not invested as they should be in America's safety and believe higher taxes cures what ails America.
In Republicans, we've got a group of who cannot even spell "spine" and are clueless, apparently, about almost everything. And who lost track of what they stood for and became like the big-spending, big-government Democrats.
And, FWIW, the way both parties, particularly the Democrats, have handled issues of life and family has served no one, including the unborn children that die daily through abortion and the relentless intrusion into all facets of America the homosexual agenda and homosexuals' misconception that they should hve different and better rights than the rest of us.
Barack Obama was able to sell himself as all things to all people. Progressives took his hope and change message seriously, while swing voters and, alas, some conservatives were swayed by his rhetoric instead of his voting record.
Live and learn...
Where are you getting these stats? The Herritage Foundation?
Everytime we get a horrible 'liberal' in office this country moves forward in ways it never thought it could.
'conservatives' make the rich richer, the debt bigger, and the country turns into a psuedo christian church.
WE're NOT ALL EVANGELICALS! GET OVER IT!
Yes, this information comes from the Heritage Foundation. The point is we are not ready for European-style democratic socialism.
Conservatives didn't make this debt bigger, Republicans did.
I am not an evangelical either. Now, if you are making a case for more libertarianism, less government activism, I'm with ya.
Otherwise, what is your point?
No, we all not all Evangelicals, we are also not all Socialists or many other things.
OHIO JOE
Hi Joe. Don't you love being stereotyped by people who say they are against stereotyping?
The Media Elected Obama, not Americans. Journalism the other Face of Communism (Made in America). Americans or Jounalism didn't vote for change in the Economy, War in Iraq, Relations with Russia, Venezuela, etc. The media voted to elect the first black president of the U.S.A. Four years from now you will see that there will be no change unless plummeting the dollar to the lowest levels.
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