*I gave the following speech to the Health Care in a New Administration workshop of Consumers for Health Care Choices at the Heartland Institute on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, in Washington, DC.

In the final paragraph, you can fill in the Effective Conservative Group of Your Choice, be it RedState.com, the Heritage Foundation, or any other of a slew of quality organizations and outlets, and I believe the statement will hold true.
*

Everybody here is familiar with the results – such as they are – of last Tuesday’s general election, which saw an increase in Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and which saw the unofficial election (I refer to it as “unofficial” simply because the Electoral College will not meet for another month to make his status as president-elect official) to the Presidency of a man with little record of any kind, and with a history of sympathy toward and advocacy for far-left groups and causes both local and national.

The final state of the Congress is still, of course, unknown. In Minnesota, election workers are pulling ballots marked for Democratic challenger and former Air America radio host Al Franken out of the trunks of seemingly random automobiles, while the campaign staff of incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman watches in impotent near-silence as their formerly 700-vote lead in that election shrinks before their eyes.

In Georgia last Tuesday, incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss snatched near-defeat from the jaws of victory as his percentage of the popular vote total dropped just below the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff. He will now face Democratic challenger Jim Martin in a December 2nd runoff election, the campaign for which is already attracting the heavy-hitting personnel and monetary resources of the Republican and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees.

Only after the results from Minnesota and Georgia are known will we be able to fully take stock of our national legislative circumstances – and, in an ironic twist, the Minnesota Senatorial race, due to state election law, could end up being decided by a vote of the United States Senate itself! With fifty-seven Democratic Senators already seated, the likely outcome of that vote leaves little to the imagination.

Should both Franken and Martin succeed in their respective quests for national office, an effective supermajority on the left side of the aisle may well come down to Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who is, of course, officially an independent simply because his own party decided his views on the War on Terror weren’t sufficiently pure, and therefore decided to replace him with millionaire and erstwhile candidate Ned Lamont.

Despite campaigning for Senator John McCain this year, Lieberman is a natural ally of the Democratic party on a host of issues and, should he not miraculously decide to finally cross the aisle in retribution for all that his party has done to him over the last three years, the Connecticut Senator could very well end up casting deciding vote after deciding vote for cloture on a host of Democratic issues.

So, what does this election result mean for us, and for the country – and, further, what does it say about the country?

Organizations like the brilliantly-run but eternally misguided Center for American Progress see the 52-48 popular vote victory claimed by Barack Obama, and the widening of Democratic legislative majorities, as a clear repudiation of libertarian and conservative principles, and a mandate for the implementation of liberal policies from onerous new environmental regulations, to expanded government-dependency programs like S-CHIP, to the federal regulation of vending machine contents, which they are calling on the new Congress and President to implement as soon as they officially take office in January.

However, a simple look at the last two years of campaigning tells us this position is almost as far from true as possible. Senator Obama, in his historic run for the presidency, did not campaign on a platform of higher taxes for the general population or bigger and more intrusive government.

Rather, Sen. Obama ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism and tax cuts for the middle class, including, in an act of new, fuzzy math, for those who currently pay no taxes whatsoever. This position was confirmed by polling which showed a sizable portion of the electorate actually believed their taxes would decrease more under a President Obama than under a President McCain.

McCain’s inability to prevent his opponent from framing both candidates’ arguments – exemplified by Obama’s success in driving the narrative that McCain wanted to tax health care benefits – played no small part in this, but it was Obama’s stated support of tax cuts for the general population that made him economically popular with voters.
Obama owes his election, in large part, to the combination of the people’s displeasure with the Republican party’s mismanagement of government over the last 14 years and to his own fiscally-conservative, limited-government rhetoric.

That the latter, coming from a politician with no history of advocating for any such thing, was believed by a majority of the American people speaks volumes about just how far the Republican party had fallen on this. And that is quite a feat – taking what was a mandate for less intrusive, smaller, more fiscally conservative government and so irresponsibly governing that they made big-government liberals seem more credible on the issue than the party whose whole reason for existence is to promote such values!

This electoral result does not, I believe, reflect the end of Classical Liberalism in its libertarian and conservative forms. Rather, it demonstrates what can happen when those leaders who are entrusted with living and leading according to those principles decide it is no longer in their own interest to do so.

Has the country moved leftward? To a degree, yes, it has; or, instead, perhaps the left-leaning portion of the population has simply renewed its voice. There is absolutely a segment of the population that is looking forward to the incoming administration and congress out of a belief that the new government will relieve them of their personal and financial responsibilities – something which too many people have always been, and will always be, willing to surrender their personal freedoms in exchange for.

However, the consequences of last Tuesday’s election will likely remind those who voted this year not to expand government but to get it back on track just what it is that can happen when rhetoric, rather than reality, is believed and used as a basis for electoral choice.

The New Year will likely see several unfortunate legislative developments.

Card check – that pet project of the labor unions which will legally remove the secret ballot from the unionization process – will almost certainly be passed by the Congress, and signed by the President.

S-CHIP, a program which is failing miserably in state after state despite millions upon millions of dollars being dumped into it, will almost certainly be expanded by the Congress, and signed by the President.

A rollback of the tax cuts enacted by President Bush, both for businesses and for individuals, will almost certainly be passed by the Congress, and signed by the President.

If President Bush decides not to add hundreds of billions more to his own presidency’s tab, then federal bailout dollars for automakers, for states, and for more banks will almost certainly be included in legislation authored and passed by the 111th Congress, and signed by the President.

The results of this election will have far-reaching effects, from the federal judiciary and Supreme Court, to America’s economic outlook, to foreign policy, and a great deal of that fallout will be negative.

The silver lining in that dark cloud, though, has the potential to be very bright indeed. As government grows, taxes are increased, the economy worsens, and the country becomes less safe, people will once again become disenchanted with the same old big-government liberalism the new administration promises to bring to Washington.
And one result of this disenchantment will be that people begin looking for what they can do to oppose it, to educate themselves on alternatives, and to work once again toward the smaller government, lower taxes, and individual choice and responsibility that combine to help make this country what it is.

The next few years have the potential to have a very dark tint to them, thanks to the consequences of the American people’s electoral actions last week.

However, should the new Congress and administration interpret the people’s election of them, which was based in large part on their campaigning on conservative principles, as a mandate to implement a host of liberal policies, the blowback will be swift and severe, and will provide an opportunity for organizations like Consumers for Health Care Choices and The Heartland Institute, which are uniquely equipped and ready to fill that need by providing the people with the information they crave and the paths to action they desire, to shine.