One thing is for sure. It would take a very committed leader to get through all the rough waters while doing it.
But Steven Harper did it, and he brought the conservatives back into power, from near oblivion after Mulrooney and the old party nearly lost every seat.
After 12 years of Liberal domination, He is prime minister, and leader of the New Conservative party of Canada.
I suspect it will take us at least 2 terms as well regardless of how we do it.
Agreed. We need to find the other Sarah Palins out there and help foster their careers, their public appearances and their confidence. The real Americans saw a heroine in Sarah being someone who was not afraid to speak up for conservative values and take on the media and the attack dogs of the left. Ronald Reagan spent decades burnishing his public image and was well-known before he sought national public office. There are others out there. We just need to find them. And then we need to spend a lot of time educating people on bedrock values through whatever media we can use. (Educators were once our allies, not no longer unless we can break the back of the unions that call the shots.) Nevertheless, conservatives need to make real commitments to educate the public.
I personally do not favor career politicians. My vote goes to those who have real world experience in taking risks and signing the bottom of checks, not just the backs. We have a nation full of people who have just voted for a nanny state and we are going to have perhaps even a generation to wean them away from that failed notion. We need to take back history, we need to reward work and penalize sloth, we need to get rid of RINOs in Washington and our state governments, and we need to rid ourselves of the notion (apparently held by President Bush and Senator McCain) that getting along is the highest value. And that’s only for starters. We need people like Thomas Sowell and Dennis Prager as philosophical spokespersons.
We need to turn our backs on the society that fosters this socialist, immoral cultural relativism by ignoring long-term consequences in favor of “sob stories” of today. Democrats long ago perfected the tactic of hiding behind sad cases to enact truly damaging policies and Republicans are falling for it. Question illegal immigration and you get news stories about Juan and Juana and their children living in fear. Question abortion and you get Sadie who was raped by her brother-in-law. Question high taxes and you get little Johnnie who now gets welfare to pay for his computer. Question accommodating terrorists and you get young Ahmed praying five times a day for peace. But there are some great examples of our past politicans being able to look past the sob story and question whether a particular policy or precedent is a good idea. They set aside the emotions and used their God-given intelligence to ask whether something that might be nice for one person might lead to more heartache later. I remember one poster gave the example of Davy Crockett (I think) who voted against an honorarium for a widow of the Revolutionary War on the basis that it would inevitably lead to others wanting the same honorarium for their families. We need to move past emotion as the highest in reasoning and help people understand that emotions can lead us astray. It is a struggle against the tide, to be sure. But we definitely need climate change.
Well, rant off. Thanks for bearing with me.