Consider that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won his first presidential election, the public was self-identified as 46 percent moderate, 28 percent conservative and 17 percent liberal. But by the 1984 Reagan re-election the public had shifted to 42 percent moderate, 33 percent conservative and 16 percent liberal - a statistically significant shift to the right. In those four years Mr. Reagan had convinced 5 percent of the electorate to move largely from moderate to conservative. And that 5 percent have stayed conservative for 24 years, right through the 2008 election. It is that 5 percent that has made America a center-right country, rather than a centrist country - allowing a fairly conservative Republican Party to win both congressional and presidential elections most of the time.
That is why it is so vital for both the Republican Party and a newly aroused conservative movement to work feverishly to make the case to the broadest possible public for our right-of-center views over the next four years. Mr. Obama has not made his case yet. Just as Mr. Reagan won in 1980 in part because a lot of moderates were tired of Jimmy Carter - double digit interest rates, stagflation, Soviets in Afghanistan, Iranian hostage crisis - so a lot of moderates voted for Mr. Obama because of housing market crash, financial crisis, drop in 401(k) account values, and two wars.
Mr. Obama will try to convert those temporary moderate and conservative votes of his into permanent liberal and moderate voters, just as Mr. Reagan did in reverse between 1981-1984. If we conservatives can make our case, the election of 2008 will be a blip, just a kick-the-bums-out election. If Mr. Obama makes his case, he may have moved the center of political gravity to the left for a generation. Every conservative man and woman to battle stations.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/11/to-battle-stations/
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