My fellow conservatives, take heart. We won Canada!{mosimage}
    Not only does President-elect Obama deserve our admiration, so does the whole Democratic Party, though I would argue that they benefited from a complicit media and a dis-spirited Republican Party that gained momentum too late in the game.  Nonetheless, the Democrats were passionate, disciplined and mobilized, electing, in defiance of conventional wisdom that we are a center-right country, one of the most liberal members of their party. To the victor goes the spoils and may the next four years bring us peace and prosperity.
    In an endless campaign full of surprises, a final twist is that the U.S. of Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush has taken a hard turn left, while Canada has turned to the right (to saying nothing of France and Germany veering to the center).
    Yes, that Canada. The Canada whose national healthcare system has been held up by the left as a model. The Canada of gay marriage and liberal immigration and stifling taxation. The Canada that some liberals threatened to move to if George W. Bush was re-elected (that was the premise of Blue State, a 2007 film starring Anna Paquin).
    The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, picked up 16 seats in Parliament on Oct. 17, making them not a majority but a greatly strengthened minority. The Washington Times’ Jeffrey T. Kuhner writes that, “For decades, the country’s liberal elites have sought to transform Canada into a North American version of Scandinavia — a multicultural social democracy characterized by economic [control], moral permissiveness and a United Nations-first internationalism. The results have been devastating.”
    So, what do the results from Canada say for America’s political future? Nothing hard and fast, they just remind us that there is a cyclical aspect to political fortune. The Republican Party is now at its lowest point since the years just after Watergate. The GOP was blown out in the 1974 midterms and lost the presidency in 1976 — and then, under Ronald Reagan, won an electoral landslide in 1980 and a dominating bloc that finally crumbled on Nov. 4, more than a generation later.
    America is much more diverse than it was in 1980 and Republicans face an uphill climb in winning votes from racial and ethnic minorities and nontraditional families, groups that don’t traditionally vote Republican. Barack Obama may well have altered America’s political landscape for at least a generation.
Or Obama-mania may fade in a single term.  Who knows? Conservatism in this country is not dead. If Canada and France can see a resurgence, there is no reason to believe the U.S. won’t. I started out here graciously but I end defiantly: I do not believe that most Americans want government-mandated healthcare and higher taxes on businesses. I believe that most Americans’ values are more in sync with those of Joe the Plumber than of Barack Obama. I believe that Americans are still deeply concerned about illegal immigration and national security, two issues that received scant attention in the general election. I do not believe that liberalism, on an issue-by-issue basis, won in 2008. Americans, justifiably upset and betrayed by their leaders, voted for change, which is neither a philosophy nor an ideology.
    Note to the Democrats: with leadership comes responsibility. The possibilities of economic catastrophe, a nuclear Iran, a resurgent Russia and the continued threat of radical Islam require more than bumper sticker-isms promising hope. They may require unpopular decisions. And remember, every president ran promising something new or in contrast to the previous administration. Indeed, today’s change is tomorrow’s status quo.

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