Last fall when the election of Barack Obama began to feel more and more imminent, some conservatives, looking for a ray of light, pointed out that sometimes things have to get really bad before they get better. Look at Jimmy Carter, they said. Four years of him brought along Ronald Reagan.
My friends were partly right. Drastic circumstances do produce drastic solutions. 29 years after his election and transformation of American politics, it’s hard for us to think back now and remember just what a radical shift in politics the election of Ronald Reagan was. It was historic. A shift now just from one political party to another, but a shift within a political party.
What I feared my friends were missing, and my words are now proving all too prophetic, was that the liberals, having learned from the Conservative Revolutions of 1980 and 1994, would change the rules to make it impossible for a new resurgence of conservatism. Then, just a few weeks into The Obama Administration, we learned that the White House was seeking to take over the census, and therefore, determine the make-up of Congressional districts for years to come. The “Stimulus” Package, touted by President Obama as the plan to revive our economy, was not just a government spending plan, it was a political spending plan.
My fears heightened as markets continued to decline. After the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, conservatives responded by giving millions of dollars to rebuild the movement. It was a back to the basic, boots on the ground approach to selling the America people on our ideas--the ideas that made America great. But with a 50 percent decline in the market and 11 years of gains wiped out, would conservatives be able to give at the levels necessary?
The perfect storm that will bring European Socialism to America could be developing.
Yet in my heart I remain an optimist. Maybe it’s too much time at the Reagan Ranch. Maybe it’s because I’m young myself, and I look at my son and I have no choice but to be optimistic. I have too much skin in the game. Maybe it’s the feeling I get each time I walk around the monuments in Washington and see the Lincoln Memorial the World War II Memorial, and so many others and realize we’ve seen tough times before, and we’ve come through them. Maybe it’s the conversation I overhead at a grocery store in South Lake Tahoe this week where a a salt of the earth type guy emphatically said, “don’t bet against America.”
Edmund Burke said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Ronald Reagan said he didn’t believe in a fate that would fall on us no matter what we do, but that he did believe in a fate that would fall on us if we did nothing.
We will do something. We’ll be part of the solution. There are still core principles that unite millions of Americans, no matter how controversial those ideas are in Washington. In the coming weeks and months I'm excited to be working with some great friends on big ideas for the future. We'll keep Veritas Rex readers in the loop, but these days I find myself quoting Reagan more and more.
"Fellow conservatives, our time is now. Our moment has arrived. We stand together shoulder to shoulder in the thickest of the fight. If we carry the day and turn the tide we can hope that as long as men speak of freedom and those who have protected it, they will remember us, and they will say, 'here were the brave, and here their place of honor.'"
