Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Part one of our Election 2008 post-mortem, rejected the notion of a “secular American majority”. I agree with Dave Sage that culture drives politics; that America has been growing more secular; and that America desperately needs a new Great Awakening outside of politics. However, Republicans are not yet Daniel in a pagan Lions Den. Part two builds on that theme, as well as how we can win back republicans that bolted the party or sat out this election; as well as win over conservative democrats and many secular voters.]

I knew McCain was going to lose when I received an “Obama saves the GOP” e-mail on the Saturday before Election Day from my friend Don Scoggins, the leader of the Frederick Douglass (pictured below) Society, and one of my personal conservative heroes. Don, a conservative black Republican, helped shape my post-2000 conversion to the GOP and has been an inspiration to me, especially as regards my efforts to reach out to minorities with the conservative message.

In explaining his decision to vote for the Democrat, Don expressed an understandable pride in Obama’s skills and symbolic value in affirming a culmination of the Civil Rights Movement. But primarily, Scoggins was voting against a McCain and a GOP that had lost their way.

At first I was shocked, but a week after the election I started to understand how Obama could save us.

Ironically, the saving will not be had by following Frederick Douglass’s “leave us alone” admonition to President Lincoln. Rather, a conservative resurrection can be built upon, now “all in” on the America Project, minority communities more receptive to the conservative message given conclusive proof that they can rise to any height in America, just like whites, on merit. We must take this message into every congressional district as well as State and Local races. We must recruit Blacks and Hispanics in districts where none immediately come forward, just as we do in majority white districts, and we must choose candidates that can win.

Obama’s third world-like crowds are dispersing back to the real world.

All Americans, too many of whom are ignorant of what disaster liberal government wrought in the 70s and the Reagan conservative anecdote of the 80s, are about to get re-educated in the looming recession born of Fannie Mae government distortion of the free market and Obama and the Democrats’ anti-Free wealth creation Market in favor of spreading your hard earned wealth to others agenda.

Republicans have been held accountable for happenings on their watch over the past decade as they became Democrat-lite. Now, Democrats will be held accountable like they haven’t been since 1994 and 1980.

Americans will be repelled by toys and peanut butter sandwich sharing before Kindergarten sex-ed. They will not confuse compulsion by government with the message of Jesus, like Obama has. They will not share Obama’s aversion to digging into the ground and ocean floor for coal and oil, as well as refinery nuclear power plant foundations for good wages. They will not be amused by energy “price lessons” from the chauffer-driven President, no matter his pigmentation. No, Americans want wealth creating jobs and they want to decide to whom they will spread it. They will not be content with Obama’s minimalist view. They will want to return to American exceptionalism.

The re-education in the failures of liberal economic policies is underway. Minds will be concentrated, and it is vital that we have energetic new leadership in place to put it all in perspective and be the alternative.

We have leaders that fit the bill like Michael Steele, Mike Pence, Mark Sanford, Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin and many others that have for too long been drowned out by “compassionate conservative” condescension or losing Mavericks, mimicking failed Democrats.

As stated in part one, the faith and conservative social views give us a foot in the door with many minorities. We should listen to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and return to first principles and reach out to those minorities.

But we can also reach out to more secular voters with one of the most basic of conservative principles: federalism. This concept can be the key to disabusing many of the Big Lie that social conservatives want to impose our views.

Social conservatives came into the political arena because federal judges were stifling their free speech and imposing a world view on their children anathema to their views. Co-author of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton (pictured below), Thomas Jefferson and the most of the rest of the Founders’ vision for happiness pursuit maximization was for federalist dispersion of power to the like-minded in their communities and the power to vote with one’s feet. Moreover, most conservatives don’t want to proselytize in public schools. It’s the liberals that do that with their amorphous tolerance and diversity and their moral and cultural relativism.

All are better off and with a much better chance that their views won’t be categorized with obscenity in speech codes in their children’s schools under a federalist system rather than a one-size fits all whim of a federal judge.

What Gamecock dubs “Faith-based Conservative Federalism” is GOP’s ticket back to the majority.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson