This is fascinating. If Barack Obama has a mandate, which itself is highly debatable, then it comes with a condition — to be like Ronald Reagan:

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment. That survey also found that 44% of Obama voters agreed with Reagan’s assessment (40% did not). And McCain voters overwhelmingly supported the Gipper.

The real challenge for the new president will be attempting to govern with a message that resonates with most voters but divides his own party. Consider that 43% of voters view it as a positive to describe a candidate as being like Reagan, while just 26% consider it a negative. Being compared to Reagan rates higher among voters than being called “conservative,” “moderate,” “liberal” or “progressive.” Except among Democrats, that is. Fifty-one percent of Democrats view that Reagan comparison as a negative. There’s Mr. Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell.

– Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports.

Here’s the Washington Post’s Ombudsman Deborah Howell:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

… The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

… Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.

I just love that paragraph above, which says, “Sure we’re pro-Obama, but no more so than the rest of our peers!”

But here’s the best part, the part where the Washington Post admits that had they actually done their job of vetting Barack Obama he might never have even beaten Hillary Clinton:

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

Obama’s admitted cocaine use — off limits. But they did run a PAGE 1 story on Cindy McCain’s addiction to prescription painkillers after rupturing two disks and having back surgery.

Oh, well, ho hum. I’m sure the Washington Post can get back to “serious journalism” the next time a serious Republican contender runs for the Oval Office. Maybe they can run another hatchet job on the candidate’s wife too.

This burns me up.

This year it’s in Minnesota. John Hinderraker from Powerline Blog reports that Norm Coleman’s lead over Al Franken has dropped in consecutive days from 725 to 447 to 237 votes. I guess they won’t actually stop the recount until Franken wins. Funny how that works.

Some very basic questions need to be answered. What are the precincts that have allegedly “corrected” the vote totals they originally reported? On what basis were the alleged corrections made? Did both Republicans and Democrats participate in the alleged corrections? Have the original paper ballots been securely maintained since the polls closed? What assurances are in place to prevent Democrats from fraudulently adding new paper ballots? Do the precincts that have revised their vote totals use the optical scan system that is, as I understand it, nearly universal? If not, why not? If so, what do the ballot machines’ tapes show? If the totals now being claimed are inconsistent with the tapes that were signed by the precinct’s election judges, on what basis can they be accepted? Why is it that each “correction” seems to favor Franken?

The Coleman campaign has reportedly dispatched volunteers to try to guard the security of ballots in some locations. The danger, of course, is that they could already be too late. Minnesota’s Secretary of State, a left-wing activist who was elected in 2006 after MoveOn.org and other nationwide groups targeted the Minnesota Secretary of State race, has yet to certify vote totals. If fraud is to be committed, it most likely has taken place already, or will occur before the recount begins.

UPDATE: Hot off the press, the first apparent evidence of fraud. Last night at around 7:30, a precinct in Mountain Iron, St. Louis County, mysteriously updated its vote total to add 100 new votes–all 100 for Barack Obama and Al Franken.

Mountain Iron uses optical scanning, so the Coleman campaign asked for a copy of the tape documenting the ballots cast on election night. St. Louis County responded by providing a tape that includes the newly-added 100 votes, and is dated November 2–the Sunday before the election. St. Louis County reportedly denies being able to produce the genuine tape from election night, even though Minnesota law, as I understand it, requires that tape to be signed by the election judges and publicly displayed.

Maybe there is some legitimate explanation for these events, but I haven’t thought of one yet. More to come.

It’s just another example whereby Democrats actively commit election fraud, but should they lose they simply project their sins on their opponents. Thus, such as in 2000, an all Democrat-appointed state supreme court affirms the cherry picking vote fabrication in three Democrat-controlled counties using faulty ballots designed by a Democrat election board. Citing the infamous 5-4 halting the process (finding December 12 as the deadline Florida state law had established for recounts – three counts all won by Bush) Democrats simply ignore the Supreme Court 7–2 vote — including liberals Breyer and Souter — finding that the Florida Supreme Court’s method for recounting ballots violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

From this, revisionists on the Left created “Selected, not elected.”

And, as any lie repeated frequently with help from media saturation, it sticks.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

– Barack Obama in his victory speech on Election night.

Pardon me, but isn’t this essentially what President Bush said in his two election victory speeches, and wasn’t it outright rejected by Democrats not minutes (“Selected, not elected!”) after the offers? The damage to the Bush presidency was done from weeks of negative coverage before he was even sworn in. That study after study after study found that Bush would have won under any circumstance was of no concern to the Democrats.

From No Child Left Behind (with Ted Kennedy!), to a massive expansion of Medicare entitlements (Kennedy again!) and big government, to new steel tariffs, to — as requested — wasting time wooing the United Nations prior to the war in Iraq, to agreeing to sunset his taxcuts, to immigration amnesty, to refusing to veto any spending bill (a major concession to Democrats), Bush went so far out of his way to “reach across the aisle” that he ended up alienating his own base in the process.

Concessions to the “other side” or to moderation is, of course, the ultimate trap for a politician, as political aficionados know. Why? Because when things get tough and they need their base, they turn around to find their base is disillusioned, demoralized and diminished.

But it is funny how partisanship is just fine and dandy for Democrats when they lose, but a “poison” to be “resisted” once they retake power.

Here’s Jerry Bowyer:

“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

-Sir Winston Churchill, Speech, 1941, Harrow School

Check the date, Churchill was speaking during the depths of the Nazi onslaught. And he was speaking to school children. The quote above is the text of his entire commencement speech to those boys. He rose, stepped to the podium, uttered those two sentences and sat down. Few people could have gotten away with that.

As I hear about the death knell of conservatism, I’m reminded of Churchill. He won WWII, and then lost the next election to a Fabian socialist named Clement Atlee. Brits had become tired of risk, tired of war, tired of privation and so they gave the reins to a man of the left. Atlee began to commandeer large swaths of the economy. In fact, my favorite Churchill story is the one about the time that Churchill was standing at the urinal in the men’s room of the House of Commons. Atlee came into the room and stood at the urinal next to Winston’s. Churchill looked up at him, zipped up, moved a couple of urinals farther down and resumed his business. “Why Winston, I had no idea you were so modest.”, said Atlee. “It’s not modesty, Prime Minister. It’s only that every time you find something that is large and functions well, you try to nationalize it, and I thought it best not to take a chance!”.

Atlee did nationalize whole industries, and the industries and the political opposition resisted. The things that were large and functioned well in the private sector, got larger, but did not continue to function well under socialism, and eventually, Churchill won back the office of Prime Minister.

We will win too. But it won’t be with same crew that brought us to defeat. Let me say in print what so many of us believe in our hearts: the present generation of conservative leaders has failed us miserably. For the most part, congressional republicans are a village of pygmies. Few have genuine leadership qualities. Fewer still can compose a clear English sentence in defense of our ideas. Our president, whom I love, certainly cannot. Our nominee is a man who spent too many decades in the DC Skinner Box where he learned to flinch every time his inner Reagan threatened to say something true about the left. Sen. McCain said in his most recent appearance on Meet the Press that he had appeared there more than any other guest in its history. He thought that was a good thing. I thought, “That’s why he’s losing.”

How could he have possibly believed that he could win an investor-bashing bidding war with a utopian socialist?

For the most part, our conservative intellectual establishment is a herd of antelope crowded around a few springs of conservative foundation money, taking no real chances, and forming a ring in which they see and hear only members of their small and shrinking herd. When someone appears who they haven’t met, a Palin for instance, they close ranks and exclude the newcomer and reinforce their own tiny circle even more strongly.

I go to DC fairly often, and I find the old guard of conservatives every bit as out of touch with my neighbors and I as the liberals are.

It’s not us; it’s them. The elements of the Reagan coalition remain alive and intact: practicing Christians and Jews, military families, investors, entrepreneurs – they’re all at least as large and probably larger than they were when Reagan convened them in 1980. We didn’t shrink, but our leaders did. After every revolution, the careerists step in. The guys who see a good job in politics or advocacy are a completely different personality type than the guys who leave a good job to go and change the world.

Here’s what you’re looking for:

If you flinch every time your leader speaks, he’s the wrong guy.

If Congress, staffer, policy analyst, etc. is the best job this guy could have ever gotten, he’s the wrong guy.

If he’s lived in DC more than a decade, he’s probably the wrong guy.

If he sounds like the people on TV and not the people in Church, temple, work, or the Rotary, he’s the wrong guy.

If he uses hackneyed phrases like ‘traditional family values’ and ‘tax and spend liberal’ instead of normal English, he’s the wrong guy.

If you wouldn’t hire him to run your own business, or recommend him to the owner of the company that you work for, then he’s the wrong guy.

History has handed us the founding fathers’ worse nightmare: a hyper-articulate, hyper-charismatic man who has a low view of the constitutional limits of government. It’s going to take the founding fathers’ best dream, a citizen-soldier of wisdom and achievement to get us back on track. He (or more likely, she) is out there already.

Bill Bennett asked me on the air the other day why voters were so hot for this hope’n’change mush, and I suggested that it’s the dominant vernacular of the age. Go into almost any American grade-school and stroll the corridors: you’ll find the walls lined with Sharpie-bright supersized touchy-feely abstractions: “RESPECT,” “DREAM,” “TOGETHER,” “DIVERSITY.” By contrast, Mister Maverick talked of “reaching across the aisle” and ending “earmarks,” which may sound heroic in Washington but ring shriveled and reductive to anyone who’s not obsessed with legislative process. This dead language embodied the narrow sliver of turf on which he was fighting, while Obama was bestriding the broader cultural space. Republicans need to start their own long march back through all the institutions they ceded. Otherwise, the default mode of this society will be liberal, and what’s left of the Republican party will be reduced (as in other parts of the west) to begging the electorate for the occasional opportunity to prove it can run the liberal state just as well as liberals can.

– Mark Steyn

If we live in such a racist country, as the friends and fellow travelers of Barack Obama argued vehemently throughout this campaign season, how did AmeriKKKa end up electing The One?

– Michelle Malkin tosses the Rev. Wright’s words back at him.

Read the rest. I love a quote by this mil-blogger, mainly because he says what I said, and you know, I’m into that:

“But, now that there’s going to be a Democrat in the White House, patriotism will be in again – so maybe the movies will be a little less dreadful, though they’ll be no less preachy.

Does the election of a black man to the Presidency of the United States mean we can finally give Europe the finger? Seeing as how those hosers have never elected anything but a pasty-white European to high elective office?

Does anyone think a day like yesterday is even *remotely* possible over there?”

Well, at least the longest and most expensive election in American history is over.

One must congratulate Barack Obama. Should not he at least be given the chance to prove he is not the most liberal president, backed by the most liberal Congress, to ever take office?

Or, rather, should Republicans and conservatives use the playbook — perfected by Democrats just days after the 2000 election — where Bush’s disgraceful treatment became what John Kerry’s own lawyer, Jeff Shapiro, this week termed, “a shameful display of arrogance and weakness” by Democrats.

The peaceful transition of power envisioned by our founders continues. We started it, and no other country does it quite as well. Meanwhile, I get a kick out of the rest of the world hailing us for overcoming our supposed racial bias — you’ll let me know when a black man rules France, or a Jewish person rules Iran, or a Korean rules Japan, or when a Pakistani rules the U.K., won’t you?

Good news: It is possible, but not likely, that Barack Obama will not be a economic socialist, or ineptly naive on foreign policy. He may govern more in the center, perhaps emulating Bill Clinton. It would also appear that the Democrats will not gain the omnipotent 60th seat in the Senate, but they came damn close.

Good news: Race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are officially irrelevant to American politics.

Bad news: If you thought the mainstream media was an Obama lapdog during the election, just wait until Obama is president. Any obsticle for the Obama presidency will instantly be spun into an advantage or at least a non-issue. Revisionist history will reach unprecedented heights.

Bad news: For the next eight years, anyone who dares disagree with any Obama position risks being labeled a bigot or racist. As Charles Krauthammer said recently, if they can make Bill Clinton into a racist they can make anyone into a racist.

I’m not pessimistic about our country or our capitalist system: They are not the problem. I am pessimistic about whether our next president and the savants in Congress can deal with the massive economic issues we face.

Members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation or yesterday’s results, will continue to meddle in matters beyond their knowledge. In doing so they will exacerbate our current economic downturn and delay the recovery of our financial markets.

– Harvey Golub, former chairman and CEO of American Express.

Read the rest.

Democrats regularly make it clear that they have little respect for middle Americans. One extraordinary example would be Pennsylvania, whom of its citizens Barack Obama said in April, “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Maybe it was the perfect strategy by Obama, who basically said… ‘prove you’re not racist by voting for me, you ignorant gun-toting, bible-pounding rednecks.’

I guess Pennsylvanians don’t mind condescending politicians, as they voted for Obama tonight.