A re-birth of conservatism?

The people of Massachusetts have finally awakened from their lengthy slumber. On Tuesday, Scott Brown was elected by the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to finish the Senatorial term of the now-deceased Ted Kennedy. This is quite a remarkable occurrence.

Ted Kennedy held this seat for 46 years. He was first elected in 1962, and the people of Massachusetts continued to send him back to the Senate every 6 years. He was a liberal stalwart in the Senate. Yet the people of Massachusetts chose to send a Republican to the Senate to take his place. In fact, his home town of Hyannis Port voted for Brown.

Kennedy was a spokesperson for many liberal ideas, including health care. Scott Brown spoke out against national health care in his campaign. It is almost a slap in the face to Ted Kennedy that the person taking his place campaigned against the main piece of legislation that he fought for over the last few years of his life. Also, it is worth noting that the people of Massachusetts, who have health care from the state, voted Brown into office. Are they now saying that they do not like (or want) government run insurance?

Anyway, there are a multitude of reasons that the Democrats lost this seat. 1) They took it for granted. Who would ever expect a Republican (much less one who is sort of conservative) to win in Massachusetts? 2) The Democrats chose a candidate that was not that remarkable and did not run a good campaign. She almost seemed not to care, as though she was going to win by default (see #1). 3) Democrats like to govern by polls, but still have no idea what the public sentiment actually is. They continued to push health care even though the majority of Americans do not want it. 4) Because of this, Democrats think that people do not really know what they want. The party insists on telling us that they know what we want.

But more than this, Democrats do not realize that when liberalism is up against conservatism in an election, conservatism will win. Whether it was Reagan, or Gingrich (The Contract With America), or George W. Bush (in 2000), conservatism wins when it faces liberalism. McCain's campaign was doing nothing against the Obama machine in 2008 until Sarah Palin got on board. Unfortunately, there were Republicans in the establishment that did not want Palin, because she was too conservative, so they tried to undercut her. They wanted the Republican party to be more moderate, to be more like Democrats and gain independent voters.

So, look what happened to the Republican Party: they became the minority party. People are not going to vote for Democrat-lite. Why bother voting to change parties in power when no real change will happen? It makes no sense. Conservatives did not show up to vote or they voted 3rd party because of the moderates that were nominated to represent the Republican party. Many of the Democrats in the house won because they were riding Obama's coattails, not necessarily because they were remarkable candidates. All people wanted was change - they did not care what it looked like.

Now, after a year in office, people are starting to see that Obama is not what he was built up to be. He made promises that he could not keep. In many cases, he lied. Unemployment is up. People are being taxed. The deficit is growing. Government is taking over businesses. And people are tired of all of this. They got their change, but it is not the type of change they wanted. And they are now suffering from buyer's remorse.

So, is the pendulum now swinging to the conservative side? In my opinion, it is too early to know for sure. But this election, along with the governor's race in New Jersey, are a good indicator that voter's sentiments seem to be in the middle of a paradigm shift right now.

We do know that when true conservatism is on the ballot, that it can, and usually does, win. People still do believe in conservative principles. However, I do caution conservative leaders to take nothing for granted. That is how the Democrats lost the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy. Conservatives cannot put the message on cruise control. They need to keep the foot on the accelerator and push their conservative agenda to the American people.