Shockingly, many conservative commentators are actually coming out in favor of some of Obama's nominations. We've got Clinton for Secretary of State, Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates staying on at Defense, etc...
These selections show a lot about what will most likely occur under Obama's administration. Gates staying on at Defense indicates some continuity on the Iraq strategy. Clinton came out as a hard-liner during the primaries and may steer Obama in a more sophisticated foreign policy.
Now, Arizona Governor Napolitano may seem an interesting nomination to cheer, but if she resigns, her successor is a Republican, giving Arizona Republicans an advantage in 2010. Same with Schweitzer from Montana (possible Secretary of Interior). Senator Jack Reed's replacement would be appointed by a Republican Governor 9he's being considered for Secretary of Defense).
Karl Rove had a good article about the obstacles Obama will face in his first few days in office.
All in all, things are looking up for Republicans. This is the second consecutive electoral defeat, but 2010 is looking up. Do not despair.

Alright, well as the Republican Party is the only party that adheres the conservative principles at the moment, conservatives have a vested interest in maintaining the GOP. The 2008 election revealed a number of weaknesses within the party structure (not the message). Money was the key issue, with the Obama campaign, DNC, DSCC, and the DCCC out-fundraising their Republican counterparts by wide margins. In North Carolina, Democrats won across the board. So now there are proposals out there that try to rectify these weaknesses: NC Conservative Future and Rebuild the Party. Check out these websites and start talking. We need good ideas for Republicans and conservatives in general to get elected. If not, we may be facing a long exile in the wilderness...

The Democrats are unrelenting in attempting to spread their anti-deregulation mantra. Apparently they believe in the "Big Lie Theory," that, if you say something over and over again, it becomes true for the masses. A recent article in the New York Times relates the story behind former Senator Phil Gramm, the man behind the deregulation wave in the late 1990s. And of course, they quote various professors who claim that Gramm's actions "contributed mightily" to our current economic crises. Sigh.
Apparently, the editorial board of the NYT and the whole Democratic Caucus needs to read the series of articles from the latest edition of the Carolina Review where the real factors that caused the economic crisis are documented: the Fed's low interest rate, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, the "moral hazard," the Community Reinvestment Act, and organizations like ACORN who pressured community banks to give loans to people who could not afford them. Hum... dereguation surprisingly does not appear on the list because, in fact, dereguation DID NOT cause the crisis! No credible economist (with the exception of Paul Krugman) actually believes this.
So, to the NYT and Democrats in general: please stop spreading myths about the economic crisis. Thank men like Phil Gramm instead of attacking them.

So, Obama has won. I haven't collected my thoughts on the issue yet, but I have a few things to say:

• We live in a center-right country. I think this election was more of a vindication of Obama himself than a vindication of his radicalism. We might still be ideologically conservative (see the Newsweek report on America's ideological leanings) but operationally liberal... but at least we're ideologically conservative...
  
• This is not the same as 1964, when Goldwater lost handily. That was a clear rejection of conservatism. McCain was always more impulsive than ideological.
  
• Perhaps the greatest irony of this election is that Iraq, the issue which led to both candidates' victories in their respective primaries (Obama got traction in the Democratic Primary because he opposed the war from the beginning and McCain wouldn't have had a chance to win except for his support for the surge), played such a small part in the election in the end.
  
• The silver lining for this election is that Bush has been clearly repudiated. Hopefully, the GOP will realize that America has repudiated "compassionate conservatism," but not traditional Conservatism.
  

The following post is adapted from, of all things, a couple of my Facebook comments on a friend's wall. A CNN anchor, Sanchez, brought McCain spokesman on the air; the spokesman did a pitiful job of deploying the Rashid Khalidi issue against Obama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5OTQUe397I

Sure, Sanchez can see through the nonsense about 'the LA times should release video and violate its confidentiality agreement,' but he's wrong to suggest that the PLO is simply another group with different views on Israel whose views are useful and true just because they exist.

This relative view of morality and truth is a symptom of the internationalist ideology that McCain should be accusing Obama of espousing. This association with a Palestinian statist could have been a catalyst in this accusation. McCain should have argued that Obama's espousal of this internationalist ideology would cause him to follow policies in office that would strip us of our sovereignty (i.e., giving political support to the ratification in the U.S. Congress of U.N. treaties created by an antidemocratic socialist/Islamist alliance), while his trade protectionism would depriving other countries like Mexico and Colombia of desperately needed remedies for poverty.

The problem with Obama is that he's so far left on so many issues that he's antiliberal - he favors public authority over private freedom. Against some free trade, against capitalism to a large extent, against protection of some offensive speech; embraces relative morality to the point that he will espouse relative truth in his domestic social policy.

The point of saying that is not to file charges against Obama, but to lampoon McCain for failing to attack Obama on his weaknesses. McCain went for personal connections to try to reveal Obama's internationalist ideology because 1) McCain doesn't know what he's doing and 2) Obama votes present on many important bills.

In that sense, McCain is a weak articulator. Too weak to win.

Yeah, the McCain guy was unprepared. He could have answered all of Sanches' questions if he had done his homework.

For example, here's a sample answer to the question about the other anti-Semetic guy: Jeremiah Wright. Black liberation theology is anti-Semetic, and Obama was influenced by black-liberation writers. I think he drew his Marxist ideas from those writers and not anti-Semetic ideas (that he drew any such prejudice from Cone, et all, is doubtful). I am convinced that Obama does not harbor any anti-Semetic or any other racial prejudice. But it is a bit scary that he espoused race-baiting Marxist ideologies during his intellectual development.

I'm not sure America would choose Obama if they had read and understood Dreams from my Father. And if they did read and understand it, and they still want it, then welcome to the new socialist motherland. This is democracy, and people will get what they're asking for. Conservatives will have to clean up the economic mess in a few years.