The Conservative Movement Is Dead?

First, a tip of my cap to the USMC Veteran who served in Beirut during the 1983 barracks attack who posted a comment to my blog on the eve of the election. I hope he doesn't mind me drawing attention to him here, but he posted anonymously so I think we're OK. This veteran who served his country with honor actually thanked me for remembering what he and his fellow soldiers endured. THAT typifies exactly what our servicemen and women are all about. They are selfless; they serve our country with honor in the face of unspeakable and unimaginable danger; they are the guardians of the Republic, our Constitution and our freedoms enshrined therein. We ALL owe them a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay. Now, onto the blog.

The Democratic wave has taken place and we're all awash in the dirty bath water that the American electorate threw to the curb. The scandal-ridden Republicans have been tossed from power, and deservedly so. For the past two years they have given us nothing but bigger, Stay-Puft style government and increasingly difficult-to-digest federal spending. As mentioned a couple blogs ago, without the tax cuts and the two superlative new Supreme Court justices, we'd have absolutely nothing to show for the past two years of Republican rule.

But, if we look closer at the results we would see that it wasn't the conservative vision that was repudiated. It was the Republicans, the former articulators of said vision, that were cast from office. And they were cast from office because they strayed from the first principles of conservatism: limited government and balanced budgets (among others).

Look no further than Representative-elect Heath Shuler to take the temperature of the electorate. Shuler, who will hopefully be more effective as a legislator than as an NFL QB, campaigned on these strong conservative platform planks: pro-life; pro-Second Amendment; pro-military; pro-limited government. Shuler was but one of a large crop of incoming Democrats who campaigned on such ideals. It's encouraging to me that the Democrat Party decided to open their tent to include people that would make Michael Moore and George Soros cringe. The once-proud party of John Kennedy would do well to make sure these voices are not ground to dust by the Pelosi buzzsaw once she assumes the Speaker's gavel. Charles Krauthammer wisely pointed out the following in his article today on the National Review Online: "The result is that both parties have moved to the right. The Republicans have shed the last vestiges of their centrist past, the Rockefeller Republican. And the Democrats have widened their tent to bring in a new crop of blue-dog conservatives." So is the conservative movement dead? Hardly. The best is yet to come.