I had a post written out about how this country just swerved off the road of Democracy (Well, actually we are a Republic, but I won't get into that right now) and onto the road of Socialism and Marxism. And while I do believe that, I decided to look on the bright spots of what transpired last night. (I will leave the funeral march song playing though. I have to mourn a little bit.)
- First off, the conservatives of this country did not lose the election last night. John McCain lost, not us. McCain was by no means a conservative Republican. He is more comfortable attacking his own party instead of the Democrat party. The only time during this campaign you would see his poll numbers rise would be when he was standing up for conservative values. As soon as he would go back to attacking conservative values, or supporting socialist values (The most glaring example is the bailout.) his numbers would go down. If there had been a true conservative candidate (Romney, Huckabee, Jindal) this election very well could have gone the other way.
- If you look closely at the election numbers, they aren't that impressive for Obama. In 2004, G.W. Bush received 62,040,610 votes, which at that time were the most votes ever received by a Presidential candidate. How many votes did Obama, the "savior" of our country get last night? 62,979,092 votes. (Up to this morning that is.) With all the hoopla surrounding Obama and this election in general, you would think that a huge majority of this country wanted him. But it wasn't the case. In fact, there were almost 3 million more votes cast in 2004.
- I believe that many conservatives stayed home this election, believing that they did not have a candidate that they supported. I also believe that from what will transpire in this country over the next 4 years will motivate people towards the conservative side of things again. We still live in a center-right country. If you don't believe me, just look at what happened with Proposition 8 in California.
- The Republicans had a lot of strikes against them this election year. You had Bush. You had the war on terror. And you had the economy going in the tank. And while the economy was NOT the fault of the Bush administration, the Democrats were able to paint the picture that they were. With all of those strikes, you would have thought that Obama would have won by more than he did. If the Republican party can regroup and start standing up for conservative principals again, instead of getting into the kind of game liberals like to play, they should do OK.
- Because of Jimmy Carter, we were able to be blessed with Ronald Reagan. My hope is that having Obama for 4 years will have the same effect.
- Going off of what I mentioned in the bullet above, the Republicans need to get back to Reagan style politics. McCain might have been a Reagan foot soldier back in the 80's, but he had long since gone AWOL from conservative Reagan values.
- The democrats won because they were united as a party. The Republicans were nowhere near united, mainly for the reasons I stated above.
- Lucky for us, it looks like there will not be a filibuster proof 60 votes in the Senate for the Democrats. Hopefully that will be able to keep this country out of some of the trouble we face.
So those are my thoughts about last night. Am I disappointed? You bet I am. Am I going to bitch and moan about Obama the way every democrat I know has bitched about Bush for the last 8 years? No I will not. I choose to be a bigger person than the liberals who have called for the death of Bush, and accused him of killing innocent people.(The WSJ hit the nail on the head about the subject of Bush bashing with this article.)
I will respect Barrack Obama as the new President of the United States of America. I might not have voted for him, but he is my President none the less. And when I do not agree with him, I will use my right as an American citizen (while I still have that right) to voice my opinion in a civil and respectable way. After all, we are still the best nation in the world today. And while we might have made a huge swing to the left last night, if you and I, and others like us stand up for what we believe in, we can make a difference.
With all that being said, I am so HAPPY that election talk is over for now. I can get back to the fun things about blogging. Thanks for reading El Donaldo. I really appreciate it.
