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Take Heart, Conservatives!
By Karol Sheinin / November 5, 2008
It’s a dreary day to be a Republican. Barack Obama is president-elect, we lost a couple of Senate seats and every liberal in the land is talking about the death of conservatism.
Except, conservatism isn’t dead. It’s not even on life support. It remains the only way to be elected in the United States.
Don’t believe me? Look at the Barack Obama campaign.
For the last two months, Obama had been all tax cuts all the time. Since the moment the financial crisis hit the mainstream, Obama has been touting his tax cuts and telling us how much more we’d be paying in taxes under McCain. I haven’t heard much at all about Obama’s promised healthplan, maybe because his campaign finally started crunching the numbers and realized tax cuts and health benefits for all don’t tend to go hand in hand.
Then there’s the foreign policy stuff. While he was ready and willing to sit down with Iranian leaders with no precondition during his primary with Sen. Clinton, the general election Obama mocked the notion that he would ever do such a thing. Why is that? Wouldn’t the true liberal move be to promise such conversations to all comers? North Korea wants to sit down for a chit-chat and some tea, let’s meet in the Blue Room! But Barack Obama knew that he would be a laughingstock and lose the election if he went that route and so he quickly adopted the muscular posture of a foreign policy conservative.
The day after the cliffhanger 2000 election, I was on a subway to work in the morning when I overheard two people talking about whom they had voted for the day before. As this was NYC, both had voted for Al Gore and were busy congratulating themselves for their choice. "Yeah, I couldn’t vote for Bush because he was for the death penalty." I did what I would never do today, I interjected that Gore was also for the death penalty. I was met with blank stares. Barack Obama too is for the death penalty. Have liberals rethought their opposition to state-sanctioned death? Or do they just not care as long as the guy has a (D) after his name?
What about gay marriage? I remember when this was the issue for so many liberals gay and straight. Do liberals still want equality for all? Obama opposes gay marriage. How come they don’t care?
Gay marriage was also defeated in California yesterday, despite the state having gone heavily for Obama. Where is the liberalism for which the left coast is known?
It used to be that being a liberal meant being anti-gun. State Senator Barack Obama supported licensing and registering all gun owners. Presidential candidate Barack Obama? Not so much. Other than his tying of guns to religion and being bitter, Obama often spoke on the idea that many law-abiding citizens have guns, and that he wouldn’t make a move to change that. He called his previous support for licensing and registering unrealistic.
The fact that conservatism as a movement lives and will live far beyond one failed election cycle is also proven in the defeat of John McCain. He was never considered a true conservative and, in fact, was always mocked as the favorite Republican of many Democrats. If it weren’t for Sarah Palin, his defeat would probably have been even more lopsided.
John McCain is an honorable man who sacrificed more for this nation than most of us can imagine, but he’s also eccentric and idiosyncratic. During the campaign, he railed against Wall Street greed and excessive CEO pay on the one hand and against his opponent’s plans to redistribute wealth on the other; he called for a spending freeze while proposing that government spend hundreds of billions of dollars to freeze home foreclosures by partially socializing the housing market.
Of all the ways to put these election results in broader historical context, it’s quite a stretch to equate the defeat of John McCain with the end of conservatism.
The fact is that no one believes Obama will govern the way he campaigned. Liberals hope he’s secretly more liberal than he has claimed and conservatives fear the same. If Obama does govern as a liberal, the likelihood is that he will be a one-term president. America is just not a liberal country. This election proves it.
Karol Sheinin blogs at Alarming News.
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has figured out that Obama is in fact somewhat of a social conservative with what seems something of a progressive libertarian bent.
"The nation the prefers disgrace to danger, is prepared for a master, and deserves one" Alexander Hamilton
I think we have one…and the world celebrates our disgrace.
I’m terrified that the hard left radical B. Hussein Obama plans to take away the $500K exemption on my home sale. I’m terrified that the hard left radical B. Hussein Obama plans to shut down talk radio. I’m terrified that the hard left radical B. Hussein Obama plans to take away my guns and make vast federal lands off limits to hunting. But I don’t give a hoot that he WILL sharply raise taxes on the $110K plus crowd to give it to people who don’t pay taxes because when he does that I plan to quit being a productive member of societey and retire.
But most of all, I’m terrified that the hard left radical B. Hussein Obama plans to pull a Chavez on America, declare a state of emergency, and suspend the Constitution.
I’ve kept a pretty open mind about taking criticism of Obama seriously, but not if the criticisms are serious. And without having to read anything further in your post, I can already tell you didn’t do your homework on the Iranian diplomacy thing. A  "precondition" is not the same thing as "preparation", and this little spoiler soundbyte, thrown out for more easily confused voters to fight over, has already been clarified ad infinitum – with the help of commentary by Henry Kissinger, no less.Â
"our new President is a "citizen of the world" and wants to bring European-style socialism to America."
 I hope so!! Then maybe the wealthiest nation on Earth will no longer be ranked 20-something in life expectancy, education, child mortality, crime…. That being said I’m not looking for French-style economic stagnation. But I think Obama is too smart to adopt something that left-wing.Â
 More likely we’ll see a Scandinavian-style system where the government respects risk and entrepreneurship but also understands that a rich country should not allow anyone to go without healthcare, education, or a very basic minimum standard of living.Â
–Z
Well, Karol, nice try. It does not matter that Obama says he is for the defense of marriage–everyone knows he is for gay marriage and America will have it under his watch. It does not matter what he says about God–he has a radically different understanding than the conservative base of this nation. Obama lied about his positions to make him seem moderate–not conservative. Obama spoke often about his admiration for Reagan for example but this is a matter of style and impact, not policy or ideology.
It is instructive to look at the only candidate that was conservative in this race and that candidate was Sarah Palin. The left destroyed her and pummelled her back to Alaska. Last night on Fox News, Carl Cameron told America all kinds of personal lashon hara against Sarah Palin, none of it true, as a gratuitous slap against her AFTER the election. This is big news all over the media. Think about it please. Obama has won, McCain is defeated and someone in the McCain campaign wants to add fuel to the rumor file against the conservative Sarah Palin.
McCain is not a conservative. The world is not conservative. The world is entranced with socialism and our new President is a "citizen of the world" and wants to bring European-style socialism to America.
Our hope is not that Obama is really more moderate than he seems–our hope is that the Republican party will get rid of all its so called moderates so that conservatism can live and breath in the next election cycle.  Â
Obama has a zero rating wiht the NRA and he will face big pressure to stay anti-gun. With Congress now dominated by the Dems–what is going to be the check and balance against these radicals? Common sense? Only the stark realities of budget deficits will contain his socialist ambitions NOW THAT HE IS ELECTED. Â
To say that he wants to look good to win is different than saying he wants to stay moderate to win again.
Nonetheless, thanks for being a voice of reason on this blog.Â
Something I forgot to mention in this piece was this: which candidate was the candidate of "faith" in this election? Which one spoke of G-d and church and a life based in faith? It sure wasn’t the Republican, despite Obama’s comment on clinging to G-d and guns.
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