Conservatives: if we’re so smart how come we keep getting out-maneuvered politically? *UPDATED*

We conservatives think we’re pretty smart. We have time-tested ideas, great thinkers (Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn, Milton Friedman, Jonah Goldberg, etc.), and people support our values in the abstract if the questions don’t have political labels attached.

Given appealing messages and smart messengers, why do we keep losing? Why was our most recent political candidate, who is supposed to be a business genius, incapable of running an efficient campaign right up to and including a functional get-out-the-vote effort? How did we find ourselves in a position where Pres. Obama proposes sequestration, then refuses to offer a budget that would make sequestration unnecessary, then refuses to negotiate with the Republicans, and, at the end of the day, is the one who comes out smelling like a rose in the public’s mind?

How did we end up with a president and a Department of Justice that decide not to defend the law of the land when it comes to the Defense of Marriage Act? Whether not you support that policy, shouldn’t the chief executive be tasked with the responsibility of defending it to the Supreme Court?

Again, if we are so smart why are we losing on our main issue — the budget — and not even making any headway on other issues that will irreparably change America’s fabric? These changes, such as immigration, marriage policy, leading from behind overseas, etc. may actually be changes for the good, but shouldn’t conservatives have a voice in them? Right now, both in DC and in our own cities and states, we’ve been cut out of the debate.

I have no answers to all these questions. I know that, when I see the headlines, I get frustrated. I cannot tell if conservative voters have a knack for electing ineffectual candidates, or if the Democrat media juggernaut is so powerful that we have reached the point at which there is nothing we can do anymore to penetrate Or affect the public debate.

If it’s the former we can perhaps make changes at a grassroots level. If it’s the latter, it seems to me we’ve already lost. It’s time for us to pick up our pathetically small number of marbles, go home, and make our peace with the America that is unfolding before our eyes.

I’m usually fairly enthusiastic about taking on semi-lost causes. I am not, however, very sanguine about taking on absolutely lost causes. If we, the party of tried and true ideas, as opposed to the the party of ideas that have failed every time; if we, the party of genuine intellects instead of sophists, cannot make our case; and if we, the party tackling real issues, such as economic meltdown and national security, as opposed to the party prevailing on cosmetic, made-up issues, such as free birth control and cell phones, cannot make our case, and cannot penetrate the media smoke, we are DOOMED.

Sorry to be such a downer, but we ought to be winning, and we’re not, and at a certain point we need to take responsibility for our manifest and multiple failures. Our candidates are bad, our thinkers don’t communicate outside of the community of true-believers, our ideas are unappealing, and we’re being encircled and destroyed by peanut-brained media talking heads.

Pfeh!

UPDATE:  It occurred to me that an alternate caption for this blog could have been “When it comes to messaging, we’re reaching each other, while they’re reaching everyone else.”  Did I say “pfeh” earlier?  I double that pfeh! now.