What have we learned?

So what have we learned?  That depends on who you ask.  The ideal answer would be that millions of previously entranced people have realized that Obama is not The One.  He is a socialist and out of control and must be stopped by any legal means possible.  That hasn't been learned yet.  There are those who know this already, but that's not really a learning, is it.

So what have we learned then? Well, let's limit the scope of the question to make it more answerable.  As conservatives, what have we learned since November 4th, 2008.  We've learned a few things. This is not a comprehensive list, but it highlights some important things.

• We've learned that President Obama is definitely  the tax-and-spend liberal we always knew he was.
  
• We've learned he does not care about deficits at all though he will spin that he does care more than anyone else in the room.
• We've learned his team is "blunderific" when it comes to foreign policy gaffes.  This extends from the weak-kneed response to North Korea to the talking with Iran, to not knowing international gift-giving protocol to not knowing the protocol of interacting with the Queen of England. The latter two, international grade-school stuff, clearly shows a lack of comprehension and homework.
  
• We've learned the American Main Stream Media will continue to overlook Obama's gaffes and short-comings because they are deeply invested in his success.
  
• We've learned liberals from the President on down are already in re-election mode, from the blame Bush Obama speeches to the JournoList cabal of reporting plotting, to the back room Carville-esque divide-and-conquer Rush-is-the-bogeyman memes.  Who knows what else they have planned.
  
• We've learned that we collectively fall for the liberal distractions and we'd better stop it and get our act together
  
• We've learned that Michael Steele is not as great as we'd hoped he would be after the RNC chair election.
• We've learned that corruption runs deep in the Democrat upper echelons but we don't know how far or where it extends yet.
• We've learned that we can organize Tea Parties but we haven't learned yet if we can get them to gather sufficient political momentum.
• We've learned the real meaning of change as espoused by the President.

And while we never really loved John McCain, because he wasn't conservative enough, we learned that he would have been a better choice than what we got.  And that's where the learnings start to fragment into camps.

We still haven't learned if we are willing to settle for a weakly conservative Republican or if we want to push for a real leader with conservative principles.  Individually we have learned where we stand on that issue, and I suspect most readers would fall into the same camp.  But collectively we haven't yet learned where as a GOP 'constituency' we stand. And the GOP hasn't learned to remember core requirements as a conservative party.

But some of us have learned that while we need to come to a position on that we simply CANNOT stand still on spreading the conservative message while we dither on candidates.  The message needs to be brought to those who can be brought into the light of understanding that underneath the labels they apply to themselves, they are actually conservatives in their beliefs, actions and day-to-day lives.  If we don't learn to bypass the  MSM and connect with the American people directly, we will have learned nothing that will benefit conservatism in the next 4 to 8 years.