The American Spectator

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Liberals were especially giddy after Watergate. The news magazines predicted the death of the Republican Party and many Republicans themselves didn’t know what to do.

Members of the party’s national committee discussed changing the name of the party or abandoning it altogether.

Then Ronald Reagan stepped forward and urged conservatives to take the party and abandon the “banner of pale pastels” flown by the GOP establishment for one of “bold colors.” They listened, organized and rebranded the old GOP, nominated him in 1980, and within months analysts were suggesting that perhaps the revitalized Republicans had doomed the Democrats to permanent minority status.

The fact is that sensible conservatives should be eager to take on the challenge embodied in the Obama victory. They now have an opportunity to go back to basics, to shape the policies of a party desperate for leadership and ideas. There are bright, energetic conservatives in the Senate and House, and even more out in the states. The party of George Bush will become the party of Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, and Mark Sanford, and it will prove to be a far more aggressive and principled threat than what Obama and his forces defeated this year.

We’ve not only been there before, but we’ve come back before and will again.

David Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Philip Klein

America is not as conservative as it seemed in 2004, and it isn't as liberal as it looks right now.

What happened is that four years ago, voters put their trust in one political party to run the country and they didn't like the results, and so, over the course of two elections, they systematically threw out that political party and turned to a different one. If Democrats disappoint the public, they could be waking up on a not-so-distant November morning just as devastated as Republicans were in 2008.

Those who are in the profession of writing the first rough draft of history would have us believe that a single election result can signal the end of an intellectual tradition, but actual history instructs us otherwise. This is especially true for conservatism, which rose from the staggering defeat of one of its own in 1964 to a glorious triumph 16 years later.

Although Barack Obama has radical liberal roots, he was elected president by papering over his past, and convincing Americans that he was a pragmatic moderate who would cut their taxes and be more fiscally responsible than President Bush. If, once in power, Obama and his Democratic allies cater to their liberal base, it will be jarring to Americans who had something different in mind when they voted for the abstract concept of "change."

Conservatives won’t thwart Democrats by name-calling, but by making intelligent arguments to the country that explain why liberal proposals will have disastrous implications and by emphasizing that there is little room left to expand social programs when the government has to fund a $700 billion bailout.

While the network of conservative think tanks, journalists, and activists will have to spend the foreseeable future on defense, trying to contain the march of liberalism, it will also be a time for the movement to engage in long-term thinking, so that it will be in a position to reassert itself when the political conditions are right.

The task for conservatives is to make small-government ideology more relevant to contemporary challenges. With all the focus on the financial crisis that hit this fall, the candidates all but ignored the long-term $53 trillion deficit fueled by entitlement spending. The choice is clear. Either lawmakers rein in social programs, or they turn America into a European welfare state, with unconscionable tax rates, high unemployment, a stagnant economy, and a shrinking military budget. Not since Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1980 has there been a better opportunity for conservatives to make the case for a smaller government with limited functions.