Sen. Barack Obama euthanized the Clinton political machine, the Bush dynasty and likely the entire Republican Party. All Sen. John McCain did was keep the breathing tubes in for the vegetative party.The media will broadcast an endless barrage of autopsies on the now defunct party. Post-mortems and eulogies for the death of a movement will spread.But mourning the death of my party is not necessarily a bad thing. And it’s far from undeserved. Yet I’m left wondering which will be the final nail in the coffin: amnesty or Sarah Palin?Politico explained the slow death of the party as a battle between Reaganism and Bushism, or freedom against security. Reaganism was defined by a consensus among three pillars of the Republican voting bloc: foreign policy, economic and social right-wingers. The article blamed Bush for making the social and economic right dependent upon Washington, D.C.There are several reasons for the recent national shift to the left: social issues, government expansion, war, the environment, global relations, health care costs, middle-class discontent with the rising cost of living, etc. David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute distanced conservatism from equality but explained extreme inequality overwhelms and undermines traditional conservative causes.Frum added, “As a general rule, the more unequal a place is, the more Democratic; the more equal, the more Republican … As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us … Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.”But give credit where it’s due. McCain probably did much better than other Republican nominees would have. He led his party through a turbulent shift in thinking, ushering in a transformation.But he also nominated Palin, which makes him partially responsible for the crackup.Palin supporters like Reid Buckley trusted her because she “speaks the American language of the plains and the frontier,” though Palin’s selection caused some to question his foresight. Some couldn’t oppose traditional marriage. Some were tired of war. Some voted for Obama as a disguised vote against President Bush and McCain.Some, like Kara Hopkins, advocated partisan do-nothing gridlock to prevent either party’s utopian vision from prevailing.Some voted third party. Some chose write-ins. Some, like myself, didn’t vote for president to prevent, as Lew Rockwell explained, giving candidates a mandate to rule as they please.But the main split can be broken down into traditional and moderate conservatives. Traditionalists like Rush Limbaugh blamed moderate Republicans for nominating McCain, citing their rationale that only McCain could attract moderates, independents and Democrats to the party. He blamed those same intellectual moderates fled the party and independents flocked to Obama.Ross Douthat of The Atlantic claimed Limbaugh attempted to discredit moderates as well as all who disagreed with him. Douthat blamed McCain, the Beltway elites and Limbaugh.The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan recalled the British Parliament election of 1997 in which the conservative Tories, after a landslide defeat, convinced themselves they lost because they weren’t hard-line enough. After the remaining Tories in Parliament became more insular, they lost again and again, until they finally woke up to reality.But to understand who’s right and wrong, we must first understand the definition of “conservative.” The short answer is: It doesn’t matter anymore. Or, more optimistically, it remains to be seen.Sullivan blogged about his struggle with the word “conservative.” He claimed the word is no longer associated with small government, individual freedom, faith, balanced budgets, tradition or prudent foreign policy. It’s now more closely related to religious fanaticism, big spending, massive debt and social intolerance. How do we preserve traditional American culture under the present circumstances? We don’t. We embrace change, preserve what we can and adapt.As Rob Dreher put it, the right must repent and rebuild by allowing dissenters to be heard. We should focus our social agenda less on politics and more on local institutions.We must resist the entitlement mentality that has plagued both parties for decades, whether it’s in terms of welfare from the left or superpower status from the right.I’m not advocating a return to the “good ol’ days.” I wasn’t around back then, and I want something new.The idea that government isn’t the answer is not a winning argument. In fact, it is both a self-fulfilling prophecy and a ready excuse for failure.How can we expect to garner votes if we’re already admitting failure? We must quit campaigning on predisposed disappointment.An entirely Democratic government could provoke radicalism and result in an unrecognizable republic. But it’s as much our fault as it is theirs.Gebe Martinez explained the new “real America” lies with immigrants, who aren’t necessarily in the Democratic corner because they have no long-standing party loyalties as new voters.And with amnesty becoming an ever-increasing prospect, this looks like a good place to start, considering that amnesty translates into Democratic rule with impunity for years to come.The demographic and electoral landscape of the U.S. will be unrecognizable in the near future, likely by 2042 when the country will become majority minority.The time has come for a radical reconstruction of our party.Top conservatives will meet this week in Virginia to discuss rebuilding the party. The meeting was kept secret to avoid an apparent premature admission of defeat in the election. The focus of the meeting, according to Politico, will deal with the party’s new direction, rising stars like Palin and Gov. Bobby Jindal, its plan for the next presidential election and where to rebuild the base with no clear location emerging.There’s a cyclical nature in American politics. Republicans, or something similar, will one day return, but the brand as we know it will likely be dead. Eventually, a contrast to liberalism will rise again.Darkest-hour-of-the-night sort of thing.The party of life might be dead, but I’m a firm believer in the afterlife. So let’s hope conservatism can rise from the dead before rigor mortis sets in.—-Contact Daniel Lumetta at [email protected]