“If Obama does win, the Republicans (and conservatives) must be ready to wage move-on type guerrila warfare against the ruling elite”

No no no no no no.

This is the attitude that got us into this mess – that winning is more important than doing the right thing. If we do the right thing, eventually we will win. But if we are just committed to winning, and don’t focus on doing the right thing, then we will (if we ever do win again) just end up with the same sort of crowd that got us into this mess and destroyed the GoP.

If we do lose, we need to focus on being a constructive minority party, constantly pushing the best solutions to problems, with a view toward building a record that will make voters understand we have the right solutions and return us to power, with a view towards finding and promoting leaders actually true to conservative principles rather than political gamesmanship.

Look at the impeachment of clinton. what did that get us? Nothing! Look at Karl Rove – for all his skill with short term political gain, look what he’s cost us – were going from control of all three branches to control of none in less than 2 years time – and the dems may even get a filibuster proof majority.

If we want to recover from this, we can’t pretend its anyone’s fault other than our own. When I was a kid, I sometimes would bring home a bad grade and try to make excuses – the teacher didn’t like me, the assignments were too boring, I had too much homework… etc. etc. My dad always said there are no excuses – either you succeed or you don’t. If you don’t, you don’t whine about how it was all so unfair – you figure out what YOU need to do do to succeed, and you do it. Confronting your own shortcomings is vital to that process.