What's Next: For the GOP, for Progressives, and for Political Campaigns

Part I: What Republicans Must Do, or The Case for Conservatism

Last night's landslide rebuke of Republican policies will leave the party of Lincoln wandering in the wilderness for years to come. The GOP will do a great deal of soul-searching, and in the end, if the wisest of its leaders prevail, the party will return to what once made it great.

The Republican Party is, ostensibly, the party of conservatism, and American conservatism used to stand for something.

Conservatism meant the protection of individual liberties. Republicans gave us the Patriot Act.

Conservatism meant the avoidance of unnecessary foreign entanglements. Republicans gave us the Iraq War.

Conservatism meant fiscal responsibility. Republicans gave us the largest deficits in history under President Reagan, then broke that record under President Bush the Elder, and then broke that record under our current lame-duck president.

Conservatism meant preventing government from intruding in people's personal lives. Republicans gave us warrantless wiretapping and intrusion into the bedrooms of Americans in the form of anti-gay marriage legislation.

Modern Republicans like to look to Reagan as the quintessential model for conservatism, but this is a foolish and dangerous notion. Instead, Reagan marks the point at which conservatism first began to go off the track, to abandon its principles, and veer onto a course best described as right-wing reactionary, not conservative. That course hit its inevitable nadir under President Bush, leading to the situation in which the Republican Party now finds itself.

Republicans, remember your ancestry. Remember Goldwater. Remember Buckley. And find yourselves again.

Part II: Campaigning, or The End of All There Is

While the long-term effects of the new regime cannot yet be known, the long-term effects of this campaign are calculable, and they are huge. In essence, Hillary Clinton in the primary and John McCain in the general ran the final political campaigns of the 20th century.

Obama beat Hillary for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones was the massive organizing effort in caucus states and small-state primaries, killing the Clinton campaign with a thousand paper cuts. That organization would not have been possible without the Internet.

Obama went on to best McCain, again for a long list of reasons, including the withering of the Republican brand and McCain's inept campaign. But perhaps more than that, Barack Obama drowned John McCain in a sea of cash. The staggering fundraising of the Obama campaign would not have been possible without the Internet. Howard Dean showed what online fundraising could do in 2004, but his campaign lacked the early organization so crucial to Obama's effort. Combining Dean's pioneering work in online fundraising with his own experience in organizing droves of volunteers, Obama created the blueprint for the national political campaign of the 21st Century. Those who follow the outdated Clinton-McCain model are doomed to failure and disgrace.

Part III: What Progressives Must Do, or Where is Molly Ivins When We Really Need Her?

The late, great columnist Molly Ivins wrote in her final column before she died, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell." That was almost two years ago now. Hard to believe she's been gone so long. But I have a hard time letting go of my dead heroes; I still expect Hunter Thompson to come roaring back onto the pages of Rolling Stone, and he's been in his grave twice as long as Ivins.

Anyway, point being that if people dedicated to the progressive cause think this is the final victory, that they can now rely on the Democratic White House and enhanced Democratic majorities in Congress to fight the good fight without being dragged kicking and screaming to do it, they are kidding themselves. For eight years, progressive activists had a White House that ignored their cries. Does it really make sense that now, with a government more amenable to the cause, activists should stop shouting?

This election is over, but this fight is not. Hold their feet to the fire. Demand they make good on their promises. Raise hell.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Comments

[ouroborous]

"This election is over, but this fight is not. Hold their feet to the fire. Demand they make good on their promises. Raise hell."

Oh, but sir, already the cries of "we must not question President-elect Obama" have begun from the Democratic faithful. How DARE we question our commander-in-chief (see Greenwald on why that phrase is atrocious)?

No, Obama showed that he was, at best, a moderate Democrat with his FISA flip-flop. He explicitly said that he would not support any FISA amendments that included telecom immunity, and then he turned around and -- well, you get the picture.

I voted for Obama, let there be no question; he was far better than McCain/Palin. But anyone who thinks that his election automatically ushers in a new era of progressive leadership is living in a fairy tale; we progressives will have to "hold their feet to the fire" every day of this administration.

[tompoe]

Dan: Sorry, but on September 19, 2008, Paulson demanded entitlement for Bush's trillion dollar going away present to his cronies. That's the day the Republican Party disavowed their Party of Small Government, and replaced it with Party of Corporate Welfare. There is no conservative Republican Party anymore. That party is dead. What has to happen, now, is for those who do not want to belong to the Party of Corporate Welfare, choose another party to join. America does not tolerate corporate welfare.

[Dan Sweeney - Huffpost Blogger]

Tompoe --

I agree with your view of the modern Republican Party wholeheartedly. And, as you say, America does not tolerate corporate welfare (although, not to put too fine a point on it, but we've done a great job tolerating corporate welfare for several decades now, just not to the excesses of recent days).

My point is that, given that America has rejected the modern Republican Party's views, the party needs to get back to what made it rise to power in the 1960s if it ever hopes to enjoy the electoral successes of the late 20th century again. Whether or not the party will take that advice is, of course, pretty doubtful.

[Romulus]

I'm going to keep pointing this out whenever I see a claim of "landslide". Has there EVER been a true landslide in this country? Perhaps. I'd have to research each and every election to find out but this election was not a landslide, no matter the rout in the electoral college. At least not by my definition. To me, a candidate would have to get a minimum of 60% of the POPULAR vote to declare a landslide. MINIMUM. 67% would probably be a more realistic number because that would mean twice as many votes for as against. Obama didn't even come close and no candidate has in my memory.

As of this hour, only 52% of the electorate voted for Obama; 48% voted against. That's hardly a landslide and hardly a mandate. 58 million people voted AGAINST Obama. Those people are just as important as the ones who voted for him.

[Dan Sweeney - Huffpost Blogger]

I should probably flesh out my lede a little more. Romulus, you raise an excellent point -- the presidential popular vote wasn't a "landslide," and it would be very difficult to actually get a landslide in presidential popular vote in this day and age. By your definition of at least 60 percent of the popular vote, the last landslide victory was that of Richard Nixon in 1972, and there are only a few others -- LBJ in 1964, FDR in 1936, and Harding in 1920. (There's also a bunch of 60-percent-or-greater wins in the early 1800s in the time of Jefferson and Monroe, but comparing those to modern elections is apples and oranges.)

But, when I wrote "Last night's landslide rebuke of Republican policies ..." I was not writing of the presidential popular vote, but instead the big gains in both houses of Congress as well as the huge electoral vote numbers. Taken as a whole -- not just as a popularity contest between the two presidential candidates -- last night was a huge victory for the Democratic Party.