A painful night. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan came so close. They
worked so incredibly hard. It really brings tears to my old eyes to
see it.
My pals are calling me in hysterics about the loss and four more
years of Mr. Obama. So, let me try to make a few respectful points
on this bitter evening:
* It is nonsense to say that this election is in any way a
repudiation of the GOP or principles of conservatism. Facing a
totally united front of the mainstream media, the beautiful people,
the unions, the black block vote, the incredibly, unbelievably
powerful gay and lesbian forces, in the media, all of whom have as
much right to campaign as anyone else… but still facing all of
that, and facing an incredibly skillful incumbent in office, the
Romney-Ryan campaign got almost exactly as many votes as the
Obama-Biden campaign.
That is, with every wind of modern political culture against
them, Romney and Ryan drew forth endorsement of conservative
principles on a truly virtuoso scale.
* It is the mark of a genuinely great campaign that Romney and
Ryan did not back down one inch on the main moral issue of our
time, the mass murders of the unborn. This is the primary evil of
our era and it may take years to make things better, but as the
saying goes, that Dr. King used to say, “Truth forever on the
scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold holds the
future and beyond that dark enclosure standeth God, within the
shadow, keeping watch upon his own” (paraphrased for this
occasion). You can call it anything you want, but abortion is a
wicked evil and we will never be what we should be as long as we
treat is as a right. No one has the right to choose to kill an
innocent human being.
* Yes, the Hispanic community is incredibly important now in
America. They should be conservatives. The ones I know are all
ferociously pro-life and pro-work. Let’s make an effort in their
direction in a big way.
They are fabulous people. We are blessed to have them. They
should be Republicans.
* We just had an efficient, loving, intelligent man in our party
run and put up a magnificent fight. But he, as the Wall Street
Journal edit page said during the primaries, was not a real
conservative and believed mostly in his own résumé. Let’s have a
real conservative with real principles next time.
Mr. Romney is a great man. Ann Romney is something close to a
saint to have worked as hard as she has while fighting Multiple
Sclerosis. Let’s honor them and have them teach us the lessons they
learned in this losing campaign so the next one will be a winning
campaign.
* Let’s not keep on ignoring the reality of our budget crisis.
We need higher taxes. It is too bad. It is a shame. But we need
more revenue to have a strong defense, to reduce the deficit, to
lessen the burden on our children. To imagine we can get it with
small spending cuts is a fantasy.
* Finally, this seems like a terrible fate. But our party has
faced far worse. We were pronounced dead after JFK stole the 1960
election in the cellars of the Chicago City Hall. We were in the
morgue after the Goldwater defeat. We were dead and buried after
Watergate and the 1974 Congressional elections, when the GOP was
just a nub in Congress. We always come back because our principles
are better suited to human dignity and human happiness than the
other side’s. We will come back stronger than ever this time, too.
We are not afraid and we shall overcome. Our best days as a party
and a movement lie ahead. We will rest, regroup, and fight for our
beliefs, and next time, it will be different and better. Truth
crushed to earth will rise again, as the saying goes — as the
truth goes.
