OK - Now What?

Now that The One is elected and the Republican Party has hit a new rock bottom and hopefully won’t drop any further, where do we go from here?

First we need to look at the election real quickly. In Iowa every federal incumbent won and won big. Most surprising to me is Latham and Miller-Meeks. I thought I was predicting a little high with 57% for Latham and I thought Miller-Meeks actually had a shot. I definitely didn’t think it would be ugly. She still has a future but will need to enter the next race with a sizeable amount of money and some new found appreciation from the diehard conservatives. She will need to answer questions distinctly and often.

King won every county and got a great margin especially for the way the Sioux City Journal has been treating him. He also didn’t and has never run a negative ad even though his opponent stopped at nothing to try to destroy King’s character.

We also have a great opportunity to win in the 3rd District if/when we get a good candidate to take Boz out.

At the state level we held our own in the Senate even though nobody was working it except the candidates. In the House we have some soul searching to do. Rants did work his tail off but even though his intentions are great, are the Representatives going to reward for intentions or punish for results. We don’t yet know if Rants did the best anyone could do or if he is ineffective. We’ll see soon how the House Republicans interpret the results and vote on the new minority leader.

At the national level both the House and Senate are in smaller minorities and will have a perfect opportunity to build a conservative base. There isn’t a need for the Democrats to even talk to a Republican anymore so no need for the Republicans to be crossing over to the dark side. Judicial appointments will be key! They will also prove to us if we have a chance to rebuild or if we will cower under the pressure.

That partially brings me to the philosophical debate we are going to have in the Party. Are we ready to finally nominate and elect conservatives that will offer some contrast or will we continue to run wishy-washy moderates who get thumped time and time again? McCain was defined as a Bush conservative. First, there is no such thing and second, if we are defined as the bad word of conservative, why not actually be one? What if a Huckabee or Thompson were to have been the nominee and stood up against the bailout? If our next nominee isn’t a pro-life, pro-marriage, tax cutting, government limiting, unabashed rock-ribbed conservative, we are cooked.

Lastly, who is going to be our leader? We have great guys and gals from all over the country who vote right and live right. Are we going to allow them to rise to the top or will we cut them down before they get started?

Anyway, time to take the gloves off and be proud to say you are a conservative and the guy in office next January stands for everything you are against. This pendulum will come back to us, we just need to help it along by calling a spade a spade and never backing down.