Dear Friends,

Don't you dare start crying and throwing a fit. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won fair and square. We must accept defeat with honor and class. We are not going to spend time with conspiracy theories and flights of fantasy over election returns. That's not how we do things.

Today you must shake your opponent's hand and show them that you are ready to participate in the process. If we decide to sit in the corner and cry, they will move on without our input. It's time to put our best foot forward in an effort to be a part of the nation's future as a builder, not a destroyer. They can not be successful without the interjection of our core values.

We've lost before and we will lose again. The key is to come back stronger. The nation is still almost evenly split. This was not a landslide of epic proportions, but it was a wakeup call. We did not put out the effort to win and that was just one of the many factors that led to defeat.

First of all, we shouldn't have sent a proven loser to represent us. Watching McCain lose at the finish line was not much different than watching him lose at the halfway point in 2000. I'm still wondering what you people were thinking when you passed over truly qualified candidates to pick a lifetime political opportunist who for years has used our back to store his knives.

U.S. Sen. John McCain's "centrist" policies and lack of clear cut stances on major issues failed to differentiate him from his opponent. When you have two guys delivering the same vague message the public is going to pick the more polished one every time. McCain missed an opportunity to be very specific about issues and win this race. We did not enter a beauty contest, but our candidate tried to compete in one. Specifics beat posturing every day of the week.

The bottom line is that McCain was a bad candidate choice. We can do better and we better start looking for our answer to Obama today. This candidate had better be everything McCain wasn't and more. This candidate would preferably be a person who hasn't spent their career co-sponsoring legislation with Ted Kennedy.

Our second problem was an avoidable one. Conservatives will always be looked at as stewards of our economy. We will always get the blame when it goes south. It does not matter if every single legislator in the country is a Democrat, if the economy tanks it's the conservatives' fault.

When the economy tanked with just over a month left in the race we were in serious trouble. Instead of explaining the situation and taking care of the perpetrators, we moved against the will of the people and handed the bad guys billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Instead of putting the fire out, we fed it with gasoline.

This was compounded by the fact that our rush to pass the corporate bailout bill did nothing to help deploy a parachute for the market. John McCain must like swimming, because he jumped on board that ship as it was going down. This was yet another example of a political opportunist with bad judgment trying to lose this election.

Our third problem was the popularity of the sitting president. I blame Bush Sr.'s cronies who invaded his son's White House. It's time to change our underwear. The crotchety old men from the Reagan era had no business trying to make Bush the second man in his family to go "four and out." Somehow Junior hung on in 2004 only to watch his numbers fall so low that any Republican after him would have had an incredible hill to climb.

Problem number four was our tremendous effort to ignore early voting. New Mexico Democrats outnumbered Republican voters two to one in early voting. We have to stop campaigning like it's 1972 and get with the times. This thing was over a week before Election Day and it's because the conservatives failed to drag everyone they knew to the polls early. Our 20 year-old "Get Out The Vote" efforts had poor success.

Listing the other 50 problems with our effort will only serve to further savage this dead horse we call pre-Obama conservatism. It is better that we talk about a few steps that we should take going forward.

No crying. I can't say it enough. We must not turn into the Democrats circa 2000 or 2004. Move on and don't make excuses – make plans.

It's time to work hard now. We must introduce our ideas to the Democrats in a manner that they can use those ideas. Let's first sit at the table and make reasonable arguments. While we are making those arguments within the various legislative committees, we need to be making those arguments to the public. We need to be very clear on exactly what our ideas are. No more of this, "just trust us," approach to legislation. Let the public trust you by giving them the courtesy of full disclosure. They will help you push your views through unfriendly waters in the House and Senate.

Again, no more backroom deals and secret legislative plans as we move forward. Do your business in the light of day as it should be done. We didn't elect you to keep secrets from us.

Make gains with good candidates in the 2010 election. Start working today in districts around the country to share specific ideas on specific issues. It's a lot easier to elect a person who's been active in the community for two years than it is one who pops up six months before election day.

Making gains in the house and senate means finding good candidates. No more old white guys who run around telling everybody they talk to God. Even if God is talking to them, I'm sure it's not about $700 billion dollar bailouts. Whatever candidates the party has on the wall as, "the future of the party," need to be forgotten. Our process of picking popular conservatives is broken and we must abandon all the people identified by that process before we move on.

When creating a new criteria for picking conservative candidates you need to pay special attention to what I'm going to write next. Stop picking the richest guy in town. I love rich people, but they don't make great candidates. They are inherently out of touch. Obama, to his credit, wasn't all that well off less than 20 years ago. He said things that resonated with folks of the middle class even though they were hollow promises. We can make those same connections with the right candidates and we can keep our promises.

Know the issues. John McCain proved he didn't know a damn thing about being a small business owner when he spoke about the subject. Both candidates missed the real issues for small business owners by a mile. It just hurt more that the guy from the "business party" was clueless. Our candidates and mouthpieces need to be experts on the issues they speak of. No more glittering generalities. The American people are becoming way too smart for that.

Don't be angry with the electorate for the next four years because they didn't do what you wanted them to do. Be mad at yourself for throwing away nearly 12 years of opportunity away on the likes of Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff. You broke it, you bought it. Now you need to fix it, and sell it.

You've got your marching orders. Now go out there and learn from your mistakes and return to your once great self.