A key question I’ve asked myself as I’ve tried to work through the appropriate response to our awful choices for the upcoming presidential election is what position each candidate would put the conservative movement in as president.  Even if we could count on them both to behave in exactly the same fashion, how they got to the presidency and how they are perceived could have a dramatic effect on the ability of people with a conservative view of policy to advance their beliefs.

In that regard, Ian Tuttle gives an important admonition that we ought to be prepared in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory:

Four years of Hillary Clinton will be enormously painful for conservatives. But millions of non-ideological Americans are going to be pained by it, too, and looking for an alternative. When 2020 rolls around, conservatives should have one to offer.

It has become clear beyond denial that mal-education means we can no longer count on the lessons of tradition, patriotism, and common sense to provide the answer for the second part of “not x, therefore y.”  It isn’t enough for us to say that things have gone wrong; we need to tell people how to set them right.  The hard part is that people won’t change their minds about the narrative with which they’ve been indoctrinated until we find that remnant of common sense that must exist by virtue of their being human beings.