People are asking Barack, in victory, what will be his first priority. What does he hope to accomplish first? This is something that we, as conservatives, need to be asking ourselves in our defeat.
Some are claiming that the Republican Party is flawed, and that we must break it down to rebuild it. This is, in fact, just what Democrats did when some broke off and, calling themselves "progressives", formed the New Party in 1995. That core group is now driving the resurgent Democrat Party. But I'm not convinced that we need to do something so drastic. I'm convinced that the ideals of this party are still the ones most shared by the American people. I think this election was a failure of our democracy more than a failure of our party.
The one indispensable pillar of a representative democracy is the free press. How can Americans choose their leaders when we cannot truly know them? It is the duty of a free press to shine the light of day on our government and our candidates. They can claim to be whomever or whatever they want, but a healthy, unbiased press will expose the truth. And armed with the truth, the American people will unerringly choose correctly. It is tragic, then, that our press is no longer free. If this is not corrected, it will lead inexorably to the demise of our democracy. This is not an overstatement.
Our first priority, then, is to take back our press. On another post, it was suggested that we need to rally around a moveon.org style website, a tool for mobilizing and focusing the powerful conservative base. I suggested that such a site could be used to organize protests against big media. By focusing our protests on one media outlet at a time, I believe we could send a very clear message that they cannot act as an advocate of one candidate or political party without alienating half of the population. As a first measure, I propose that we organize a "sit out" during the next sweeps week, where we select one station, perhaps NBC, and direct every member of this group to avoid watching programs on that network (any of its stations, really). As a secondary protest, for those willing, they could avoid these stations entirely until NBC cleans up its act.
Big media is not (yet) subsidized by the government. They are part of the free market. That means that we're the boss. We can tell them what they can and cannot do. We simply need to organize so that our voices can be heard, and they will have no option but to comply or fail.