How We Got Here : What Now for The GOP? #4

More pundits join the chorus to find out what happened on November 4th - everyone has their ideas as to what to do now or who is to blame.

Only time will tell if we, as conservatives, have the back bone and perseverance to stand up for what we believe, no matter what is said about us from both sides of the isle. Conservatism has always worked for America, and most people are conservative, so take heart, we can do this. Republicans that want to play both sides of the issues, or even side with socialists, will have to do without conservative support.

Keep the faith -

How the GOP Got Here -Understanding and recriminating. An NRO Symposium
Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Jonah Goldberg

When asked if he’d run for office again, Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, responded: “No! The people of New York threw me out of office, and now they must be punished.” The American voters threw out the Republican party, and they were largely right to. At least in the sense that the GOP deserves to be punished. The problem is that the Democrats do not deserve to win. More on that at NRO later — and by later, I mean the next 2 to 8 years.

I think McCain did better than pretty much any other Republican candidate could have. But I think the McCain campaign didn't do as well as they could have. I think McCain could have won. They blew an amazing number of opportunities. They mishandled Sarah Palin horribly. They were obsessed with unfair media coverage while doing very little to take advantage of it or even do anything serious about it. They inherited an enormous number of problems not of their own making, but they made even more problems for themselves than they needed to.

There will be much more said about this, but in short I think John McCain biggest problem was that the GOP had lost any sense of intellectual or ideological definition and John McCain didn't bother to offer any definition of his own until helped by Joe the Plumber. And by then it was too little too late.

— Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.