I’m gonna ramble a bit here just to get some of my thoughts on Tuesday’s voting out there. The reason it’s going to ramble is because my thoughts and reactions are all over the place.

My first thoughts were disappointment. Not because Mitt Romney did poorly. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about his campaign as I was about Fred Thompson’s. After thinking about it, my real source of disappointment is that the GOP doesn’t have a real conservative in the running.

I realize that no candidate can be all things to all the many varieties of conservatives. A child would have to be raised from birth by a secret right wing cabal to meet those kinds of expectations (a work of fiction I would love to write some day). Each candidate totes some baggage that disqualifies them in the eyes of a percentage of the conservative electorate.

Still, there is something disturbing about a John McCain candidacy. It seems to me that he has gone out of his way over the past few years to poke his finger in the eye of many Republicans and conservative issues.

A caller on Rush Limbaugh’s show yesterday made a great point about the call for Republicans to show their party loyalty and get behind McCain should he become the nominee. She said (this is not a direct quote, just from memory) why should McCain and the Republican party be able to expect loyalty from us when we haven’t seen that kind of loyalty from McCain?

For a time I even had some curiosity about what it would take to form a third party. Wouldn’t it be great to have Fred Thompson on a bRight & Early party ticket? Ok, apart from the problem of finding a good party name, the law and logistics of creating a new party are daunting. Beyond that it would take years, if not decades, for a new party to get any notice or success. In the meantime we get years of Hillarycare and who knows how much more of the lefts socialist agenda. When I think about that I nearly want to cry for our country.

Through my reading and thinking I came up with another thought. It is hardly original with me, as I’ve seen it expressed in various ways on various sites, but it strikes me as the most reasonable.

It is important to remember (I’m saying this as much to myself as to any of you) that the president is only a small part of the governmental equation. The power of appointment that comes from the executive branch is huge. In the next few years it has every possibility of determining the make up and direction of the federal courts and, of course, the Supreme Court. The importance of that power can’t be discounted.

Of course the other key part of our system of government is the legislature. The ultimate conservative president would find it hard to advance an agenda at odds with a liberal legislature. On the other hand, returning the House and Senate to a more conservative mix will do much more to promote conservative ideals.

So as I look at Tuesday’s results I am convinced that the best thing I can do to protect and project the conservative cause is to promote conservative candidates, highlight their campaigns, support their plans. And while I am under no illusion that reversing the losses of 2006 will be an easy task, I am convinced it is one that should be done. It needs to be done. Quite frankly, I can foresee this as an easier task in 2010 following after two years of whatever degree of liberal occupies the White House.

Those are my thoughts, disjointed as they are. Please, I would love to hear yours in the comments.