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Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media.com

 

The results are in and the recriminations have begun. Sure, it might not have made any difference, but the number of sins of omission and commission by the McCain campaign is breathtaking. Let’s get a head start on the finger-pointing and give you the top thirty mistakes John McCain and his team made:

 

Not pursuing the Reverend Wright connection, as an issue of judgment and then credibility. Even Jerry Nadler knew it was a sign that Barack Obama lacked political courage, i.e., character.

 

Waiting until September to raise Barack Obama’s other troubling connections (e.g., Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi). Read article.

Jonah Goldberg, NY Post.com

 

Congratulations, Democrats: Barack Obama ran an amazing, landmark race. And the Democratic Party has broken with its historic tradition of snatching defeats from the jaws of victory.

 

Expect the Democrats to stream into Washington and dive into the federal treasury like giddy caddies cannonballing into the swimming pool in Caddyshack. Obama and his allies appear to have their mandate.

 

Those of us who didn't want this to happen now have two competing hopes:

 

·         The conservative in me hopes that Obama sees the wisdom in governing as a centrist, if not a center-right, president. Read article.

 

Thaddeus G. McCotter, Spectator.org

 

Welcome to "Republican Rock Bottom."

 

Possessed of no vision, no principle, no purpose, and no appeal, we deserved our fate.

 

Now, seize freedom!

 

Finally, we are divorced from self-deceits. Dead is the self-indulgent imbecility of "re-branding" -- as if the Republican Party was a corporate product to be repackaged, not a transformational political movement to be led. Despite what the media will tell you, and what so-called "conservative leaders" will discuss ad nauseam during "secret" meetings, this situation is not a crisis. It is an opportunity. Today, we are as the Great Emancipator proclaimed during another time of national trial: unbound by the tired dogmas of the past; and free to think and act anew.

 

First, we must not mindlessly mimic the momentarily triumphant Left. Read article.

 

Tony Blankley, JWR.com

 

Conservatism always has been and always will be a force to reckon with because it most closely approximates the reality of the human condition, based, as it is, on the cumulative judgment and experience of a people. It is the heir, not the apostate, to the accumulated wisdom, morality and faith of the people.

 

As a force in electoral politics in any given season, conservatism, like all ideas and causes, is hostage to the effectiveness of the party that carries its banner, the candidates and leaders who articulate its principles and programs, and the engagement and spirit of the people who are its natural adherents.

 

A dispassionate critique of the performance of each of those elements would have to conclude that the core of the conservative people — our natural adherents — were inflamed with both passion and knowledge of conservative principles. It was the party and the candidates, leaders and conspicuous advocates (with some honorable exceptions) who failed both in their visions and their performances a cause that yearned to be well-led. Read article.

 

Philip Klein, Spectator.org

 

Those who are in the profession of writing the first rough draft of history would have us believe that a single election result can signal the end of an intellectual tradition, but actual history instructs us otherwise. This is especially true for conservatism, which rose from the staggering defeat of one its own in 1964, to a glorious triumph 16 years later.

 

John McCain is an honorable man who sacrificed more for this nation than most of us can imagine, but he's also eccentric and idiosyncratic. During the campaign, he railed against Wall Street greed and excessive CEO pay on the one hand and against his opponent's plans to redistribute wealth on the other; he called for a spending freeze while proposing that government spend hundreds of billions of dollars to freeze home foreclosures by partially socializing the housing market.

 

Of all the ways to put these election results in broader historical context, it's quite a stretch to equate the defeat of John McCain with the end of conservatism.

 

At the same time, it would be irresponsible and unhelpful to ignore the severe challenges conservatism faces in both the immediate and long term. Read article.

Jon Grinspan, Spectator.org

 

Picking a president based on his qualifications as a drinking buddy seems like a quintessentially contemporary act, typical of the false familiarity of 21st-century politics. Yet the linkage of booze and ballots is as old as popular democracy itself. In one of the most important elections in American history, enfranchised citizens voted not on the promise of an imaginary Budweiser with the candidate, but because of very real barrels of crisp, refreshing hard cider.

 

If Americans are aware of the election of 1840, they remember it because the victorious William Henry Harrison dropped dead 30 days into his first term. His opponent, Martin Van Buren, is equally arcane, though this Kinderhook, New York native's nickname -- "Old Kinderhook" -- helped spawn the world's most popular expression: "O.K." What many forget is the explosive popularity of the campaign and the turnout of three-quarters of eligible voters it engendered, all helped along by Harrison's association with fermented apple juice. Although big issues were at stake in 1840, Harrison's image as a simple soldier with a taste for down-home, American cider truly excited voters. Read article.

Cal Thomas, Townhall.com

 

More than the economy has melted down. What remains of big media credibility has also liquefied and won't recover anytime soon, if it ever does.

 

Don't take my word for it. The ombudsman for The Washington Post acknowledges that conservatives have a point when they claim an imbalance in coverage of Barack Obama and John McCain.

 

In her Nov. 2 column, Deborah Howell writes, "...it's true that The Post, as well as much of the national news media, has written more stories and more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain. Editors have their reasons for this, but conservatives are right that they often don't see their views reflected enough in the news pages."

 

What might be "their reasons"? There is only one answer: Too many journalists have been in the tank for Obama and wanted to see him elected president. Read article.

 

Read Their Lips - And the winner is … tax cuts.

Online WSJ.com

 

"It [my economic plan] starts with tax relief. There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign. And the truth is, my opponent and I are both proposing tax cuts. . . . I want to put a middle class tax cut in the pockets of 95% of workers and their families. My opponent doesn't want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan." -- Barack Obama

 

Assorted pundits of the left and right keep telling us that the tax issue has lost its political power. They must not have been paying attention to the Presidential campaign, and especially not to Barack Obama. One of the Democrat's main political feats this year has been to portray himself as a more formidable tax cutter than John McCain.

 

As the quote above shows, Mr. Obama has made tax-cutting central to his candidacy, going so far as to compare himself to Ronald Reagan in the bargain. His claim about tax rates under Reagan happens to be false, because the Gipper left office with only two income tax rates, 28% and 15%, down from a top rate of 70% when he won in 1980. By contrast, Mr. Obama is proposing not a single tax rate cut, and his proposed top income-tax rate would be closer to 42%. Read article.

 

Deroy Murdock, NRO.com

 

‘Ecuador has more voting integrity than we have here in East Cleveland today.”

 

That is the considered opinion of a Republican attorney who is helping to monitor elections in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He requested anonymity to avoid drawing attention to his employer. I have known him for years as an honest and very serious patriot and consider his comments reliable. He rang me to discuss the shenanigans that he and other Republican poll watchers have witnessed today in greater Cleveland.

 

“GOP observers are calling in reports of multiple voting. People brazenly are coming in two or three times to vote,” he said, the exhaustion clear in his voice. “We may have an observer in one of every five or six precinct buildings, and they can see only so much. People are coming in where there are multiple registrations for the same address. Read article.

 

Peter Slevin, Washington Post.com

 

In his first interview since he became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, said today that he had a distant relationship with Barack Obama and that Obama's opponents had turned him into "a cartoon character."

 

Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he thought the accusation by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that Obama had been "palling around with terrorists" was absurd.

 

"Pal around together? What does that mean? Share a milkshake with two straws?"Ayers said. "I think my relationship with Obama was probably like thousands of others in Chicago. And, like millions and millions of others, I wish I knew him better." Read article.

 

Daniel Stone, Newt.org

 

During the presidential campaign, voters have heard endless talk about the candidates' plans to overhaul U.S. energy policy. Starting this week the winner will begin working to enact that vision—and, in the process, he'll confront the political and budgetary challenges that have constrained previous presidents from making the country more energy independent. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich understands these challenges better than most, and in a new book, "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," he outlines his ideas for how America should take control of its energy future. Gingrich, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, spoke to NEWSWEEK's Daniel Stone. Excerpts:

 

STONE: Haven't both candidates overplayed the notion of green jobs and green investment boosting the economy?

 

GINGRICH: No, I don't think so. One of the reasons I'm so angry about energy is because we were supposed to have our first future-generation coal plant by 2008. Now it's supposed to be 2016. Meanwhile, the Chinese will open their first plant next year. There's a very high likelihood that the technology that goes around the world and earns royalties will be Chinese. Now that is a terrible comment on American bureaucracy and red tape. These kinds of things can lead to dramatic economic growth. We need to have a very large infrastructure of energy. We need to be competitive.

 

With countries like China less concerned about the environment, can a better U.S. energy policy really make a big difference?

 

You actually can solve the environmental problems better in the U.S. [even] at a time when China is building one new coal-burning electric plant per week. [Solutions aren't] going to come from China and India and countries that won't give up growth for the environment. So I think the sound, healthy [policy] is to tax America's energy producers, because we are the country most likely to have very high environmental standards.

 

What happens to McCain's "all of the above" approach if the Democrats—who favor a more reser'ved strategy on drilling—take over multiple branches of government in January? Read article.

 

Larrey Anderson, American Thinker.com

 

There are three distinct possibilities of what might happen to America under an Obama administration. Believe it or not, one of them is not all that bad.

 

Obama rules as the divisive, race baiting, wealth redistributionist that he is. This is the worst of all possible worlds. Obama will have more than willing accomplices in Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

 

If the Democrats move full steam ahead (what is going to stop them?) with their proposals on health care, banking, education, regulation, immigration, cap and trade, energy, and more, America will be on its way to becoming a third world country faster than you can say "sharing the wealth." This is a terrifying possibility. America is inches away from it becoming a four-year reality. But I am less worried about the economic devastation that will result from this scenario than I am about the cultural and moral havoc that will take place in our country. We can recover from an economic crisis. We have done it before. But the retooling of our judiciary (it will be swift and it will be total) into an offshoot of the ACLU will take us decades to repair.

 

But I am less worried about the economic devastation that will result from this scenario than I am about the cultural and moral havoc that will take place in our country. We can recover from an economic crisis. We have done it before. But the retooling of our judiciary (it will be swift and it will be total) into an offshoot of the ACLU will take us decades to repair. Read article.