The last Clark S. Judge column is now posted at Hugh Hewitt’s blog and in it he’s asking the questions that I have been struggling with in how to think about the ongoing failures of the GOP in the last two election cycles.

• Why has our team repeatedly fumbled the ball on tax and spending cuts? Those failures cost the party the presidency in 1992 and the Congress in 2006. What’s going on here?
• Why have we been so late to identify emerging issues like energy and the environment and late to ask what besides a government check and a new or bigger agency will address them?
• In such areas as health care, housing and Social Security, decades of demographic, technological and economic changes are overwhelming and unraveling programs introduced in the 1930s and 40s. Why have we failed to sell the American people on any of our fixes to these failures of government?
• Walt Whitman heard American singing, but do we? Have we lost touch with the American narrative, with the nuances of the nation’s culture, with the fabric of its life?
• These are questions. They do not imply answers. But in campaign-consultant speak, the GOP has underperformed at the polls for sometime now. Why?

If you wander around the right side of the Blogosphere there is much post-election analysis and recrimination, especially toward John McCain for being not nearly conservative enough. Well folks, he sure wasn’t, but somehow he won the primaries necessary to become our candidate. We could have had Mitt Romney at the top of the ticket, but as John & Lowell have been documenting for the better part of two years at Article 6 Blog, the evangelicals in our midst just couldn’t help but deep six his campaign over his religion, LDS. So, once again we cut off our nose to spite our face, or trip over our lil’ Richard’s as the case may be.

One ray of sunlight shining on that particular SNAFU is the coalition of religious groups that worked so hard to get CA Prop 8 (CA constitutional amendment for reestablishment of traditional meaning of marriage) on the ballot and passed by a majority of voters. Catholics, evangelicals and yes, Mormons all played a big part in this success. Now, all are needing to pull together even closer to help each other stand up to the ever increasing onslaught of anti-Prop 8 agitators, who having lost at the ballot box are taking to the streets with noise, confusion and now even violence.

All caught on tape, the video shows one protester grabbing the styrofoam cross from Burgess’ hands. Another protesters is shown stomping on it. Burgess says she was struck on the head and spit on.

“The crowd was very angry that someone was here that they felt didn’t belong here,” Burgess said. “But I’ve lived in this city for 30 years.”

“I don’t want to keep it peaceful anymore,” one protester yelled. “We should fight! We should fight!” he shouted.

During a live interview with KPSP Local 2, protesters encircled Burgess. Yelling expletives and hateful slurs, the crowd turned their anger on our news crew. Many were angry that the woman was given a chance to express her opinions.

Your obedient Okie created a simple video for ProtectMarriage.com that runs on YouTube, and my YT profile has been continuously assaulted by the most vicious and profane comments that one could imagine. I simply delete them, and comments are disabled to keep the video page religion and children friendly — no need to expose the innocent to what orifice they can have stuffed with what object, or to learn all the common gutter names for anything/everything sexual. Before these LGBT whack-jobs decide to “fight”, they had better consider that there are a lot more of us than there are of them — and I’ll guarantee that we’re better armed. At A6B John comments on the protests and their actions against religion in general.

As I have argued I, as an Evangelical, have a moral obligation to come to the aid of the Mormons in the face of this sort of onslaught, but as the protests spread, I have a practical one as well. Simply put, we’re next. Mormons are the battlefront in what is all our battle. The opposition has used the force of the courts and the people of California have said “NO” – now they seek through intimidation and violence to do what they could not achieve legally. They wish to dictate our religious expression and practice to us – first the LDS and then the rest of us. We are not just defending the LDS here, we are defending ourselves.

But I digress a bit. I keep going to that Clark Judge list above; We conservatives must hone our message, it must be relevant to the times and to the young people of America. We must embrace the technologies of communication and build our own MoveOn.org’s and DailyKos’s — and we must think into the future so that we can leverage the technologies of 2012, and 2016 and beyond.

The other side will — if we don’t, we’re as dead as the dodo . . .

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