Fresh from a trip around the USA during the Presidential election, Brian Monteith considers, in a two part article, where American conservatives go from here.

The heavy defeat of the Republican Party in this year’s US Presidential elections – coupled with a drubbing in the House and Senate elections that were contested also – has left American Conservatives with a lot of soul searching to do.

Just why did they fare so badly and what can be done to rebuild for a successful future? I took part in some discussions with US Conservatives when out in Santa Barbara the week after the elections and I can vouch there are a lot of unhappy people looking for solutions and no small amount of leadership.

The first thing I would urge caution upon any discussion is to recognise that in the last thirty years US politics has changed considerably. Just as Margaret Thatcher represented a redefinition for the British Conservative Party, melding together a relatively relaxed social outlook with a free market and low tax economic policy, including a huge shift from state to private ownership of public corporations and housing, together with a robust, almost hawkish, foreign policy that in total was broadly called ‘Thatcherism’ – so the election of Ronald Reagan represented the breakdown of old Democratic and Republican allegiances as more Democrats began to abandon the now clearly big-government ‘liberals’ and see themselves as small ‘c’ conservatives. They gradually switched to the once progressive Republicans that had begun to adopt a broadly conservative stance.

This was crucial for Republican victories under Reagan and the Bush Dynasty for it meant that few Democrat territories were safe from the conservative onslaught and it also defined that for Democrats to win they had to espouse a low tax or tax cutting agenda as part of their more liberal programme.

Now, though conservatives are feeling sore, believing that Bush, but more especially Republicans in Congress, have let the movement down by talking conservative but not acting conservative. The huge growth in the Federal budget and the emergence of the unloved banking bale-out plan has been particularly open to criticism. The failure to explain how the Democrats created the sub-prime market in the first place and then prevented much needed reforms of Fannie May and Freddy Mac seem especially inexplicable.

McCain had looked to have been making progress against Barack Obama, especially after announcing Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was unveiled as his Vice Presidential pick – but the implosion of the US economy signaled to the public by the collapse of Lehman Brothers put McCain on the back foot for the rest of the campaign. With loan defaults growing, foreclosures becoming common and unemployment increasing Americans had finally had enough of Republicans. McCain’s earlier admission that he new little about economics now came back to haunt him. Conservatives had been saying as much for months in the primaries, but they split their votes and a lack of a clear conservative leader let maverick McCain through the middle – hence the complete and utter disillusion they feel. Conservatives are getting blamed but they feel their guys all have alibis.

In European and the mainly liberal American media Sarah Palin has come in for a great deal of criticism and sometimes ridicule. Such attacks are little more than wishful thinking and unattractive schadenfreude. The real truth is that Palin re-energised not only McCain’s ailing campaign – for he was not a popular Presidential nominee alienating many party workers and activists – but also ensured McCain’s defeat was not as bad as it might have been. In the polling analysis available after the election Palin can be seen to have put as much as eleven points on McCain’s vote, attracting more women and more men than McCain did.

Furthermore, American conservatives feel that she was badly handled by the McCain campaign, shielding her from the media and thus creating doubts about her abilities – when she in fact demolished Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debate and has subsequently handled the media competently and without gaffes.

The three most damaging stories circulated about Palin – her alleged attempt to have a State Trooper sacked, her apparent ignorance about Africa being a continent and not country and her use of a $150,000 wardrobe – have now all been comprehensively demolished. She has been cleared of the misuse of power, no one at the ‘Africa’ meeting heard her make this comment and she turned up at the Republican convention to find the wardrobe had been ordered without her consultation or request. Expect therefore to see in the next few months the reclaiming of Palin’s reputation by her and her supporters – indeed it has already happened with an exclusive series of interviews on Fix News and other such initiatives to follow.

Palin admirers are already discussing if she should enter the Senate or find another position that might help her strengthen her credentials before 2012 while she will undoubtedly become a serious fundraiser for the Republican Party thanks to her ability to draw crowds to dinners and meetings. There are, however, many other Republican Governors that could give the GOP a generational shift such as Tim Pawlenty from Minnesotta, Bobby Jindal from Louisiana and former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Michael Steele.

Of course in none of the comments above have I discussed the impact that Barack Obama might make on the political landscape once he becomes the 45th US president in January. If he reveals himself to be a left of field liberal, conservatives would hope to benefit, but if he moderates himself and the Democratic Congress, a second term would surely beckon whatever the Republicans do. My hunch is that the American public believes Obama has an arduous almost impossible task and will therefore cut him a lot of slack, at least at the beginning. Republicans should therefore build a strategy that looks not just to 2012 but 2016 – a along way away!