Conservatives- It’s Time to Stand Up

There are a lot of different factions being blamed for Mitt Romney’s loss last night- the media, voter intimidation, fraud, the Tea Party.

None of these is the real reason. The right wing continues to lose because we continue to care about what other people think about our identity. Pundits say we’re racists, we push Marco Rubio and Mia Love to the front of the party. Pundits say we’re too extreme, we run a moderate in an attempt to assuage independent voters.

When are we on the right going to stop worrying about public opinion? As long as we allow others to define our party’s image and message, and focus on identity politics and not message, we are going to lose. And deserve to.

Time after time, we run moderate candidate after moderate candidate, arguing we’ll appeal to more people.

And does it work?

No. Not only did Mitt Romney lose last night, but nearly every conservative running for Congress, except for Michele Bachmann, was defeated.

People had a hard time believing Romney as a person? No wonder. He was running as a conservative, a moderate, and a centrist. He can’t really hold all of those positions. Of course he’s going to come off as fake.

And the idea that conservatives can’t win because of their religious social positions is absurd.

Exactly how is making no exception for rape or incest any more extreme than believing in partial birth abortion, or late term abortion? It’s not. They’re both legitimate arguments. Yet, Barack Obama supports third trimester abortions, and no one screams about how evil he is.

The only reason this is an issue is because of fear mongering from the media.

As Barack Obama stated in his race against John McCain, when you can’t run on a record, you make issues out of nonissues. Sound familiar?

And yet, the main stream media is continuing to spin the race. MSNBC started talking about how the evil right wing gun nuts were going to rise up against Obama even before the results had finished coming in.

Enough of the rhetoric. Our silence, and our willingness to let these pundits frame political talking points, is only making this worse. It’s also helping us lose elections. How much time did we spend talking about social issues instead of the economy?

Conservatives- it’s time to stand up and say enough. It’s time to stop letting others define our values. It’s time to stop being distracted by racial, gender and class politics.

It’s the only way we can win.