America has not drifted left

Several of the Democrats who won their congressional elections yesterday are moderates or social conservatives. And Sen. Obama won by campaigning towards center, and benefitting from an uncontrollable economic crisis. He did not win on his liberalism.

The American public has still not embraced many aspects of liberalism.

President-Elect Barack Obama’s record and positions put him well to the left of any president in the last four decades. But to judge from his campaign, he is a man who wants to cut taxes, defend an individual right to own guns, take a hard line on terrorists in Pakistan, reduce the abortion rate, allow people to keep their health-care plans, and keep trade free. The polls suggest that he was wise to run in this fashion: They show that the public remains as skeptical about federal activism and social liberalism as they have been for years.

The Democratic leadership are planning around that, now that power has been seized.

But they may only enjoy it until the next mid-term election if federal activism and social liberalism run as rampant as they threaten to already.

Exit polling from yesterday shows a majority of Americans identifying themselves as independent, moderate or conservative.

In our first editorial of the year, we wrote: “Conservatives believe that American interests and values are threatened by familial instability, runaway government, and weakness and confusion in foreign policy. Those convictions will retain serious political strength for as long as they are rooted in reality.” The contemporary conservative vocation, we added, was to breathe new life into those convictions. We stand by that judgment.

McCain lost, some analysts’ contend, by running as a moderate and abandoning some of his conservative base. He came as close as he did in no small measure because of the tremendous energy Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber brought to his campaign (and back to that base). Both of them were unafraid of talking boldly about conservative values, and unapologetic about the merit of those values for social growth and human dignity.

Such defeat of a value system is bracing, evident today in the pro-life world.

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life…asserts that the pro-life movement will grow in strength and that the President-elect has already “failed miserably” a key test for public office.

“Americans have made a grave mistake in electing Barack Obama to the presidency,” Fr. Pavone wrote. “He said during the campaign that he does not know when a human being starts to have human rights. How can one govern from that starting point of ignorance? Governing is about protecting human rights; to do it successfully, you have to know where they come from, and when they begin. The President-elect has already failed that test miserably.”

Fr. Pavone sounds a note of defiant confidence, declaring that the pro-life movement is winning in the culture and that “a new chapter of the pro-life movement has just begun.