Like some other people I know, I had followed the election with a feverish-cult like obsession that might lead one to believe I had placed sizable bets in Vegas regarding the outcome...I had not. What I had done, was hoped for a result that I grew increasingly convinced was not possible. I awoke to a grim reality on Wednesday...not that Romney had lost or Obama had won, but that the ideology that I have most closely identified with was in a terminal decline and perhaps untenable. That was a difficult day. I've since heard every pundit and faux-pundit (i guess that includes me) on earth spout out about what "republicans need to do". Sometimes these are Democrat pundits whose thinly veiled agenda is hidden behind their feign altruistic desire to "help the republican's out" ...these voices should be muted and tuned out immediately. Then there are the republicans who are ready to become Democrat-light and abandon any policy that has been suggested by the other pundits to be toxic to the party. I've had my fair share of questions on where I stand. I realized I have already answered this question....I wrote a blog in 2010 on the eve of the wave midterm elections, I spoke about what I think the future of the republican party needs, and in that blog lies what I believe is the solution to a republican party that has a future as a national force. here is the link to that piece, you can read after the "here are my thoughts" part: click here Many of these issues have been individually addressed as the solution, but I don't think any one of them alone is the answer.
When the spin stopped last week, and it became clear that the people who are the "brightest and best" old guard pundits were dead wrong, we had to face something...the unofficial leaders of this party do not have their finger on the pulse of our country. Never have I seen such a wide spread epidemic of misplaced confidence, than I did this election cycle. Does the phrase "the emperor has no clothes" mean anything to you? This leads me to ask myself....are we now going to listen to their view of what we need to do to move forward? Perhaps its time to begin to look to new people for solutions, analysis, and most importantly ideas. We cannot continue to recycle talking points that are clearly loosing elections for us. I went into to Tuesday night hopeful....hopeful that I was wrong. Hopeful that the anxiety that had mounted in me would be washed away in an upset...hopeful that the minority of republican analysts and pollsters would leave leave egg on the face of the majority of those who said that Romney had no chance. Hopeful but not blind to the reality. While my fox watching friends thought I was crazy, I knew in my core that a Romney win would be an epic underdog upset. While the election was a huge blow to me, unlike the upper ranks of the republican party, including Romney himself, I was not blindsided by the loss. The overall election results did surprise me, the states that were won, some of the ballot measures that passed in certain states...but I was not shocked that Obama was re-elected. I had stated on Facebook a few days before that I thought Obama would win, as I had also predicted in 2008. Why were the people who are suppose to be the experts so wrong? One might assume that they were just trying to give republican voters hope, but by all accounts, they were all quite confident in their analyses. It is clear to me, that we need to move to new, younger, more relevant people to analyze, problem solve, and idea generate for the conservative movement.....the problem is how? I have ideas, I have analysis, but I have no influence outside of my circle of friends. How do we change things when we have no voice?
One last thing, if you have despaired since the election, as I did for several days, It's time for us to start to engage in the process of problem solving again. It is absolutely an uphill battle, but embedded in our psyche is the folklore of the brave, innovative, relentless spirit of the pioneers of this country, and of the generations who have followed. We can't give up, we aren't the band who played while the titanic sank. I am not. It's hard to keep going when things seem bleak, and no one had more pessimistic words than I did on Nov 7th, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. Don't despair, it was the battle, not the war that we lost.
"We have every right to dream heroic
dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes,
they just don’t know where to look." Ronald Reagan Inaugural Address 1981
peace,
kg
