I had the most surreal conversation with two women I know last night. I wanted to pull my hair out. The were both positively giddy at the Obama win. Like their actual lives were about to change. One idiot said that she was proud because she comes from a family of bigots and racists and she finally broke the cycle. Shocked, I asked her to name me ONE thing, pomise, policy Obama offered that she agrees with. OF course, she had no answer. I asked her if she realized that voting for someone PURELY BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN is the very definition of racism, all I got was a blank stare..and then back to the joy...THEY DON'T CARE. They are part of the "groupthink" That old, psychological phenomenon that people will do things they know they shouldn't if the are part of a group.
After speaking to these women I realized what we are up against and, unfortunately, we must appeal to people's emotions when we are running, because people appear not to give a crap about issues anymore. I don't think they even understand issues anymore, they are that dumb.
“My sister-in-law called me and told me she was scared...AND SHE VOTED FOR HIM. It’s unprecedented, the idiocy of people in this election. The media did its job..they literally brainwashed people into voting for this guy.”
Barack Obama:
“My job is to be so persuasive that if there’s anybody left out there who is still not sure whether they will vote, or is still not clear who they will vote for, that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama”
It's like a Vegas wedding.... including the unpleasant rash that comes soon after.
Folks are gonna rue the day, and I suppose that's a good thing. The question is: are we going to be ready to show them the road back to responsible citizenship?
That's our task for the next 4 years: we need to figure out what we stand for, how best to get the word out, and most of all we've got to find a candidate who can carry the banner. That will be tough: we haven't had one of those since Reagan -- and it's difficult to think of any others before him.
Our main problem is that people aren't comfortable with a lot of what they think "conservatism" stands for; and conservatives only make it worse by our tendency to answer actual human misery with philosophical arguments -- the left has been successfully using that against us for decades. In that sense, Bush43 was correct in calling for "compassionate conservatism;" the problem was (and is) that we can't offer any clear idea of what such an agenda that might entail.
So ... we've got our work cut out for us.