If you happened to be at M Street and Wisconsin on Tuesday night at about 11:45 p.m., less than an hour after Obama was declared president-elect, you would have seen a very distraught-looking man in a McCain-Palin shirt shaking his head in despair as hordes of Obama supporters flocked past him on their way to the White House. That man was me.

As a conservative Republican, I found Tuesday night to be one of the most dreadful nights in my memory – not because the Democrats won so decisively in virtually every contest nationwide or because we elected a president whose policies I fundamentally disagree with, but because I finally caught a glimpse of my party lying in shambles and in desperate need of repair.

I spent that night under the haunting specter of one question: “What now?”

There are numerous problems with the party as it is. The GOP lacks direction because we have abandoned principle. We have allowed ourselves to devolve from principled statesmen to pragmatic politicians, sedated and apathetic by our recent control of the presidency and both houses on Congress. Is there nothing for which we would allow ourselves to suffer? Have we so willingly given up our principles in the name of political expediency that there is nothing for which we now stand?

The party that once stood for small government is coming to the end of the term of one of the most expensive Republican presidencies in history. We who once prided ourselves on defending the rights of life had nominated a candidate – Senator McCain – who in 2000 declared that if his daughter wanted an abortion they would have a “family meeting to discuss it,” and who in 2004 joined 57 other senators in writing a letter to the president calling for increased funding for embryonic stem cell research. Our proud ethic of individual morality has been dramatically undermined by the likes of Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Larry Craig and Ted Stevens (who, if he is allowed to keep his congressional seat, will be the first convicted felon in the United States Congress.)

I am not alone in my disdain for this new brand of Republicanism. Indeed, the elections of 2008 were undoubtedly a resounding rejection of the Republican Party as it now exists. We cannot continue as we are. We must have a transformation, not because it is politically expedient, but because we have allowed ourselves to become too drunk with power to remember those things that once motivated and impassioned us.

We have forgotten that politics and power are not an end in themselves, but rather that they are a means to promote the policies in which we believe. But if we no longer believe in anything, how are we to legitimately petition the American people to let our power continue? Before we seek to become powerful once again, we must first seek to be men and women who are impassioned by conviction rather than convenience.

The reform of the Republican Party that must inevitably take place over the next few years will be one of ideas. The students of Georgetown University, because we inhabit a culture that is so pervasively political, will play an influential role in the development of new ideas, fresh thinking and strong leadership in the GOP. Republican students must take the initiative to equip themselves with knowledge of the principled foundation on which the party’s beliefs are based. This will more adequately prepare them to defend those beliefs.

I strongly advocate a return to the principles of conservatism. Some will undoubtedly respond that conservatism has seen its day and that the American people have left conservatism behind, but I reject this assertion outright. George Bush was not a conservative president. John McCain, while certainly a great war hero and valorous man, was not a conservative candidate. Therefore, I find it difficult to accept that the American people have rejected conservatism when they have seen so little of it in their leaders of the past decade.

If, during vigorous debate in the coming years, conservatism falls because it is determined to be lacking in applicability to contemporary American politics, so be it. We need not tie ourselves to an archaic philosophy simply because it is old. But it would be just as careless and indeed dangerous to disregard any philosophy before it has been examined simply because it is old; I believe that conservatism can show the direction and guidance our party so desperately lacks and must regain if it is to be a viable contender in this new era of American politics.

Justin Hawkins is sophomore in the College and a member of the Georgetown University College Republicans.

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