The Prisoners' Dilemma

Oh.My.God. We just elected a socialist as President of the United States. As Michelle Malkin says, "Gird your loins, conservatives!" But..she makes some good points:

What do we do now? We do what we’ve always done.

We stand up for our principles, as we always have — through Democrat administrations and Republican administrations, in bear markets or bull markets, in peacetime and wartime.

We stay positive and focused.

We keep the faith.

We do not apologize for our beliefs. We do not re-brand them, re-form them, or relinquish them. We defend them.

We pay respect to the office of the presidency. We count our blessings and recommit ourselves to our constitutional republic.

We gird our loins, to borrow a phrase from our Vice President-elect.

We lock and load our ideological ammunition.

We fight.

It's gonna be a fight, indeed. Obama has a lot of payback to tend to, and now he has the presidency and control of Congress to help him do it.

Remember how Rush did the "Death of Hillarycare" monologue way back when Hillarycare went down? He needs to do another one, and call it the "Death of Objective Journalism." That is another way in which the 2008 election will be remembered by those of us who pay attention.   

Okay, I'm a little bitter...

JASmius adds: "Journalism" hasn't been objective in decades.  What happened this cycle is two-pronged: (1) Obamedians stopped pretending to be impartial, and (2) they used their media dominance to quite literally shout down the center-right mainstream media (talk radio, blogosphere, etc.).  And they succeeded in getting a Marxist elected president of the United States, which will lead to the formal banning of any media but Obamedia.  The only question is how long it will take our presumed court challenge to a reimposed "Fairness" Doctrine to make its way to the SCOTUS, and what mood Anthony Kennedy is in when it's time for Olympus to vote.  One would think that Justice Kennedy's fondness for conjuring up constitutional rights out of thin air would bode well for his joining Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito in defending the clearly enumerated First Amendment liberties that are supposed to already be there, but this is the same SCOTUS that upheld the constitutionality of campaign finance reform, so I'm not holding my breath.

As for Double-M's admonition that "we fight," who is "we" exactly?  It sure won't be what's left of the GOP.  This isn't like 1992; that go-round the new Donk president had run and gotten elected as a blue-dog centrist; the Cold War was over, the economy was on the upswing, and the Donk Congress was at the end of a very long run in power (eight years in the Senate, forty in the House).  This time the Donk president-elect did little to truly conceal his hard-left True-Believer-ism, we're still locked in a class of civilizations with radical Islam, Iraq can still be lost, Pakistan is just waiting to be taken over by bin Laden, Iran is going nuclear, and the economy - sabotaged by those same rampaging, triumphant Dems - is nose-diving into the worst recession in a quarter-century (at least).  Plus, the Pelosi/Reid Politburo is just beginning its run on top, and they're back to majorities not seen since 1990.

Oh, sure, they're going to make everything worse, and by next fall B.O. will own the whole stinking mess, his propagandists' "Bush Lookback Derangement Syndrome" not withstanding.  The opportunity will be there in 2010, by results and dint of history, to regain much of the ground that's been lost the last two cycles.  But another 1994?  Who's going to lead it?  John "The New Bob Michel" Boehner?  Mitch "The Third Campbell Soup Kid" McConnell?  Where will we get the horde of quality, motivated challengers?  Many of the House seats that went "blue" yesterday were ones abandoned by retiring 'Pubbies.  Perhaps they'd have lost if they had stayed and fought, but it's telling of the Republican Party's direction that so many fled the sinking ship instead.  Ditto Wayne Allard and Pete Domineci heading for the hills on the other side of the Capitol.  There'll finally be more Dem Senate seats up for grabs next time - there could hardly not be - but who'll the party get who can seriously challenge for them?

I understand what Michelle is saying.  What else can she say?  You can make the argument that 1994 came as much from the grassroots "fighting" spirit that Mr. Newt had the vision and savvy to harness.  But that isn't going to be enough without a nationally viable Republican leader at the top to reprise Speaker Gingrich's leadership.  And there's no hope of that until 2012 when perhaps Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal can team up two diverse, dynamic, (hopefully) two-term conservative governors and show what a Barracuda can do when relieved of the burden of having to put over a malodorous old war horse.

But that day is SOOOOOOOO far away.  And in the mean time SOOOOOOOO many things are going to go wrong in the next four years as a direct result of American voters' irrationality, foolishness, and temporary clinical insanity.

Or perhaps we should consider the possibility that America is....no longer a "center-right country".  In which case it doesn't matter how much we conservatives "fight" for our principles.

That's the fulcrum question of this new dark age: Is it 1992,1976, or 1932?  And will we live long enough to learn the answer?