Column by Jacob Sims

I started getting into politics a few years ago, and after the recent election of Barack Obama, I started to recall several conversations with my former teachers. I first heard about Obama four years ago when I just happened to tune into the Obama-Alan Keyes debate. I knew very little about the political world back in 2004, but I liked this man of change and hope. After getting a little bit more interested in politics, my government teacher, a Democrat, mentioned his name again. He spoke of this rising star in the Democratic Party who had the support of Oprah and who nobody really knew much about. But he was very articulate and had a promising message.

I listened to him speak a few times, and I compared him to Martin Luther King Jr. in his eloquence. Even though it was early in the primary, I thought we might have found the right man for the job, despite his alarming lack of experience. I was considering breaking party lines to vote for him. As my government teacher once asked, “What if?”

My puppy love disappeared once I started doing research on him and his record. He was selected as the most liberal senator in the United States but claimed he wanted to meet in the middle and reach across party lines. He spoke of judgment but surrounded himself with fraudulent politicians such as his “political godfather,” Emil Jones, and Jim Johnson, former crooked CEO of Fannie Mae.

He spoke of the economy and the corruption of Fannie Mae but took more contributions from them than any other senator except Christopher Dodd. He spoke of change and hope, but he’s been talking about that since he originally ran for the Illinois state legislature. It seemed that the more that I found out, the more and more my heart broke because his record indicated that he was just another politician. But I would sometimes hesitate and wonder, “What if?”

Now that the political firestorm is over and the dust is going to start settling soon, I want to, first and foremost, congratulate President-elect Obama and all of the students that served as volunteers for his campaign. This election cycle was grueling and passionately fought, and I am certainly glad that I was a part of history (despite being on the losing side).

I also want to thank all of my Republican counterparts on their efforts to keep our Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. For a Republican to maintain his or her position in today’s political climate favoring the Democratic Party, it speaks volumes of a candidate and his or her team.

All of that aside, I have a message for both sides. I first want to address my fellow Republicans. The work of rebuilding our party from the ground up starts today. We need to get back to what gave us the majority in the first place, and that includes less government intervention, less taxes and being fiscally conservative, things that drastically influenced our fall from grace. We should be appalled that the government took one-fourth of the annual budget ($700,000,000,000 – 11 zeroes) and bailed out banks that failed because of the government’s and the Congressional Democrats’ lack of competence to take action, even when the Bush administration and Republicans warned of this crisis back in 2003 and 2005. Do not take this election personally because power in Washington is cyclical. We begin the rebuilding process today.

I also have a message to Democrats. First and foremost, I wish you all the best of luck. You have significant majorities in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and of course the presidency. I genuinely hope your party can solve all of the problems that are presented to the American people and our nation.

From here on out, you no longer have Bush as the scapegoat, and you have an opportunity to try to prove why you believe your political and economic philosophies are superior to ours. If you bring us prosperity, while maintaining our power in the world, then by all means, I support it. But if not, we will be back in four years, re-energized and unified.