Here’s the lesson from the recent elections. With the economy in the state it’s in and the Dems trying to destroy what’s left of it, Independants aren’t going to vote on social issues. Independants aren’t going to care much whether a candidate is a social liberal, social moderate, or social conservative. They’re going to vote based on the candidates fiscal issues and the priority the candidate seems to give them.

This is great, great news for social conservatives, if we’re willing to listen and get off our high damn horse for a minute. Winning elections requires winning the Independants. Up till now, the debate has been whether to run social moderates to win the Independants. We don’t have to worry about that any more. We can run guys like McDonnell, social conservatives who focus on fiscal issues. They can win.

But they better focus on the fiscal issues, because if they focus on the social issues, those Independants get worried they’ll go the “compassionate conservative” route and spend us into bankruptcy being so compassionate.

This is a golden opportunity to re-establish public trust in the “Conservative” brand. Conservative has to include both fiscal and moral issues though (and honestly, borrowing our grandchildren into economic slavery is hardly a morally upright thing to do). The last decade, we’ve abandoned the fiscal part and lost trust from a significant part of the electorate. Typical Democrat overreach has handed us the chance to make up for that mistake.