Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Conservatism was NOT Defeated Tuesday

There are a number of commentators suggesting that yesterday’s electoral sweep by Barrack Hussein Obama was somehow a repudiation of conservatism. Many of the same people also suggest that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the embodiment of modern conservatism, was to blame for our loss. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was bad enough that Obama waged a racist campaign from the very beginning touting the possiblity of the “first black President.” Bad enough that McCain shot himself in the foot by suspending his campaign when the financial crisis struck and walked into a trap set for him by Congressional Democrats. All that was bad enough but not fatal.

Obama Bought This Election

When Obama walked away from his oft-stated pledge to accept the spending restrictions of public financing of his campaign he made a conscious decision to buy this election. What followed was the most massive fundraising drive in history. It enabled Obama to massively outspend McCain in so many of the key battleground states like Florida, Virginia and Ohio that would otherwise have gone to McCain if the playing field were level.

Obama Leveraged Record Fundraising, Spending to Defeat Rivals
By Jonathan D. Salant
Blomberg
November 5, 2008

“Barack went into the knife fight with a machete and McCain went in with a pen knife.” Republican consultant Craig Shirley said.

Barack Obama obliterated every political fundraising and spending record in U.S. history.

The Illinois senator harvested more campaign cash than anyone before him, using both the Internet and traditional high-roller dinners to bring in more than $650 million from some 3 million donors for his presidential campaign. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, raised less than half that amount, as did George W. Bush and Al Gore combined in 2000.

Obama’s fundraising revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are financed and may kill the Watergate-era system of providing public money for the general election.
…
With his extra money, Obama almost tripled McCain’s advertising expenditures as Election Day drew near. He spent $21.5 million to McCain’s $7.5 million from Oct. 21-28, according to a University of Wisconsin study. During the last weekend of the campaign, Obama ran 5,947 ads in seven competitive states compared with 3,358 for McCain, 77 percent more, according to the Nielsen Co. On Nov. 3, Obama ran 3,410 ads in those states; McCain ran 1,900.

Even before the final ad blitz, Obama had spent $190.2 million on media, compared with $76.7 million by McCain. The money allowed him to both fend off McCain’s attacks and go on the offensive. In addition, he was able to expand his campaign to states traditionally inhospitable to Democratic presidential candidates, such as Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana.

Through Oct. 15, Obama also spent $46 million on staff salaries, more than double McCain’s $20.1 million, helping to open field offices and build a get-out-the-vote operation.

The seeds of corruption have already been sown. The question is: how long will it take before the overgrown bramble is obvious to all?

also:

Surviving A Obama Presidency

Dan McLaughin at Redstate put together a great Obama survival guide we should all adhere to:

(1) Oppose Obama, Not America: The absolute wrong way to react to life in the minority is … well, what we saw from too many people on the Left the past 8 years: calling everyone from the President on down to individual soldiers and Marines war criminals, parroting the propaganda of our enemies, exposing classified national security secrets on the front pages of the newspapers, and generally doing whatever possible to stymie the national defense and convince the nation and the world that America is the bad guy. We’re better than that. When Obama fails to act to defend America and its interests and allies, or violates the basic common-sense principles of national security and foreign policy, we will of course be unsparing in our criticism. But we should not emulate the Left; indeed, the day may even come when Obama needs defending from the Left for doing what needs to be done, and we certainly want to encourage him to take actions that provoke that reaction.

(2) No Chicken-Hawking: This is a corollary of #1: given his shaky draft history, Bill Clinton at times appeared afraid of criticism over deploying the military on grounds that he didn’t serve. We should never make Obama feel that he should blanch at defending the nation simply because he never wore the uniform (fortunately, on that score, Obama’s defining personality trait is hubris). We’ve had civilian leadership before, we’ll have it again.

(3) Don’t Question The Verdict: Was there voter fraud in yesterday’s election? Were there other shenanigans both legal and illegal? I’m sure there were, and others who follow those stories will no doubt be expanding on them in the weeks to come. Chronicling specific instances of misconduct is an important service - to expose the miscreants and their connections to the Obama campaign, to punish and deter and provide a basis for someday preventing a recurrence (although don’t expect the Obama era to see anything but massive resistance to taking even the most tepid steps against voter fraud). And likewise, of course, there is still plenty more to be examined in Obama’s fundraising, to say nothing of the untruths he told to get elected and the really shameful behavior of the media.

But fundamentally, he got more votes where it mattered and he won the race. Supporters of Gore and Kerry who refused to accept those realities in 2000 and 2004 ended up doing a lot of lasting damage to public confidence in our electoral system. The step of challenging the results of an election is a grave one not to be taken without serious evidence. Let’s not repeat their mistakes with conspiracy theories.

(4) Don’t Blame The Voters: Yes, it’s tempting to go off into the place where Democrats were fuming about “Jesusland” four years ago. And yes, Obama got a lot of votes for bad reasons or from vacuous people. Hey, there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and in America, and a fair number of them vote - they vote when we win, they vote when we lose. Winston Churchill was a great believer in democracy as the least-worst system of government, but he’s also the guy who once said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

For all that, it’s counterproductive to lose faith in the collective wisdom of the American voting public over the long term. Even when the public makes a mistake, it usually has a reason - and while electing Obama will be clearly shown over time to have been a mistake, the GOP also has some serious introspection to do about how we let things come to the point of giving the public a reason to do what it did. And we need to retain faith that rebuilding our party around the principles that have succeeded in the past, and adapting those principles for the world of the next decade, will win them back.

(5) Don’t Get Mad, Get Even: Yes, it’s a cliche, but unfocused rage goes bad places. There’s a lot of work to do to prepare the ground for the GOP to come back as it did in 1994, 1980, and 1966-68. The Left drew first blood on the Bush second term only a few weeks after the election, with the Bernard Kerik nomination. We’ll have a target-rich environment to work with as the kind of urban machine politics the Democrats have made famous comes to the White House, and we’ll have fun doing it.

(6) We Play For 2010, Not 2012: I’ll be writing up shortly my early thoughts about the GOP presidential field in 2012, and plenty of others will too. Do it, get it out of your system, come to the aid of the people who will make up future presidential fields, but whatever you do, don’t get into primary-season, my-gal/guy-or-the-highway mode again until we are through the 2010 elections. There will be a need in the party’s future for Palin and Jindal and Sanford and Huck and Mitt and all the rest; we’re all in this together.

(7) Prioritize: More on this later, but Obama and the Congressional Democrats are going to have a long list of issues they want to press, and we can’t stop all of them. The GOP needs to divide issues into four buckets:

• a. Things we are prepared to go to the mat to stop
• b. Things we want to force the Democrats to commit themselves to so we can take the dispute to the voters
• c. Things, however modest, we actually think we can accomplish even with the Democrats in power
• d. Things we want to propose as positive agenda items even knowing they’ll go nowhere, to lay out our own roadmap for the future.

(8) Watch Your Budget: We’re all going to have to prepare for tougher economic times, plus the burden of Obama’s tax hikes. Don’t overextend your own finances.

(9) Grow A Thick Hide and Get Your Taxes in Order: Joe Wurtzelbacher won’t be the last Obama critic to feel the weight of government intrusion for standing up to Obama. David Freddoso and Stanley Kurtz won’t be the last conservative journalists to have their investigations stonewalled and campaigns organized to drive them off the radio. And get used to being called a racist, as everyone who gets in Obama’s way is, sooner or later. Understand now that you will need to stomach all that and more, and you won’t get rattled.

(10) Buy More Life Insurance: Well, at least if, like me, you live or work in a city that’s a top terrorist target, and have roots too deep to leave. Our risk tolerance will have to go up.

(11) Pray: Well, this one speaks for itself. Pray especially for the unborn.

(12) Get On Living: Life is short and there’s more to it than politics. We’ll need committed activists, and as a whole our movement will need to be relentless - but thinking about politics too much is unhealthy, especially when you have a long wait ahead for any progress. For my part, starting tomorrow I’ll be back to doing more baseball blogging. Take a break whenever you need one, spend more time with your family. And teach your kids that every minute of life is worth it even when the world seems to have gone mad. Many generations before us have done so in tougher times than these.

We have to get back to our principals…small government. Once we do we then attack the left…not like they attack the right which can be downright dishonorable. No, we attack them as we did in 1994. Because believe me, after two years of this socialist as President people will be looking for a way out. After two years of their hard earned income being confisicated by the state, they will be looking for a change. So keep your nose to the grindstone and keeping fighting. We got Sarah Palin out of McCain’s mess of a campaign, thats a start.