This is where it all begins again.

Dark as it may seem right now, the conservative movement has a future. The leaders are there. The opportunity for them to lead will come soon.

Yes, Barack Obama won—but he beat us at our lowest moment, not at our highest point. We were an exhausted entity, a tired enterprise, a broken machine in desperate and severe need of repair. It’s time for us to make those repairs, and come back stronger and better than ever.

Now, with growing evidence that Obama will govern as a doctrinaire, standard-operating-procedure Democrat, it’s clear that we must get our act together. Soon, America will demand change from the “change.” America will demand real reform and real results. America will demand a new conservatism for a new era.

Some conservatives say that all we have to do is go back to the old ways, the old methods, the old arguments, the old traditions, in order to defeat Obama and his agenda. Those conservatives are deeply, grotesquely wrong.

Obama’s agenda will not be defeated by the old strategies and plans; after all, the old strategies and plans could not stop him on November 4. New language, new battle plans, and new methods must be used to take the fight to Obama. New warriors must fight this new opponent.

We can’t use twentieth-century strategies to fight a twenty-first-century President. Going back to 1983-era conservatism won’t cut it: after all, we wouldn’t use 1983-era medicine to combat a 2008 disease, would we?

Conservatives will look at the new leaders and choose a favorite. Some will choose Sarah Palin. Some will choose Michael Steele. Some will choose Tim Pawlenty. Some will choose Eric Cantor. Some will choose Mike Pence. Some will choose Bobby Jindal. They will find different icons, but these icons will all share the same goal: returning conservatism to a position of prominence in American life.

Conservatism is hurting right now. Millions of Americans have been radicalized against the concepts of limited government, lower taxes, a strong national defense and providing protection to unborn children. Our new leaders face a daunting challenge: convincing Americans that the left is truly not right.

The new leaders see reality. They know that America is not, at this moment, a center-right nation. They also know that, with effort and intellect, America can once again be encouraged to accept the conservative vision.

We will never have another Ronald Reagan. Yet we do have people who can take the best of the Reagan vision and update it for a more technologically advanced and racially diverse era. The aforementioned leaders have that ability. It’s only a matter of time before they have the chance to demonstrate it.

There is cause for hope. If a new conservatism—untainted by the old cultural stereotypes, undamaged by the legacy of a failed Republican administration, unhurt by the image of anti-intellectualism and ideological intolerance—can gain a foothold in America, it can grow even faster than it grew during the Reagan ‘80s. Now that Obama has essentially admitted his Administration will be little more than a ‘90s rehash, it’s only a matter of time before the seeds of the new conservatism can be planted.

The old conservatism died on November 4. It needed to die. The old conservatism was charged with racism, homophobia, greed and religious intolerance in the court of public opinion—and thanks to the overzealous prosecutors of the mainstream press, it was found guilty and executed. It is now time for a new, more politically savvy conservatism—a conservatism embraced by a generation comfortable with Americans from all races, religions and backgrounds, a conservatism that can undercut and destroy the false claims of the Fourth Estate, a conservatism that is as knowledgeable about Facebook as it is about Fred Barnes.

The old conservatism was just that, old. To many Americans, it seemed as though conservatism was just something for Caucasian Christians with canes and comb-overs. To quote Steely Dan’s song “Pretzel Logic”, “…Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.” Soon, America will ask for a new, fresh, vigorous, multiracial, eloquent, strong and supple conservatism to lead us out of the Obama Nation. When America asks, we will have the right answer.

When we win again—when America embraces the new conservatism for a new era—we should thank Obama. After all, if he didn’t bring the old conservatism to its knees, we wouldn’t have been able to get the new conservatism on its feet.

Let’s face it, folks: the Republicans need a bailout.

Like GM and Lehman Brothers, the GOP has certainly seen better days. Its stock fell to an all-time low on November 4, when Barack Obama Inc. outbid the GOP for the White House. Since then, the Republican Corporation has been struggling for its very survival.

It wasn’t like this twenty years ago, in the go-go ‘80s. Back then, the GOP was under the leadership of a bold, forward-thinking, visionary CEO, one who led the company to new heights. Unfortunately, the GOP hasn’t found a leader with such vision since. (I can think of a certain bold, forward-thinking, visionary, solidly conservative CEO who could have saved the GOP this year, but we’ll leave that aside for now.)

Very few people are buying what the Republican Corporation is selling anymore. Back when Ronald Reagan ran the company, he sold freedom and opportunity, and millions of Americans formed lengthy lines to purchase those products. Now, what does the GOP sell? “Traditional values”—a product that’s nutritious and wholesome, but one that really doesn’t fly off the store shelves.

The GOP is now a socially conservative organization, one that stands for values handed down from the Founding Fathers. “Traditional values” are good and pure and decent and clean—but they don’t really attract customers in this day and age.

Thanks to Democrat Industries, and its ancillary companies NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, “traditional values” are now considered bad products, the symbols of bigotry and economic inequity. Large segments of the US population now want nothing to do with “traditional values” as defined by the Republican Corporation. They’d rather stock up on the secular stuff being sold by Democrat Industries.

Yet the GOP cannot stop selling “traditional values.” It’s their signature product, the device that made the Republican Corporation a household name. “Traditional values” need to be on the market, according to the GOP’s Board of Directors: after all, they say, if we don’t sell this product, who will?

The Republican Corporation cannot solve this problem—which is why the Republican Corporation will soon be out of business.

It may be reprehensible what Democrat Industries has done to the concept of “traditional values”, but it’s also reality. For the past three decades, many Americans have been taught to believe that “traditional values” are nothing more than the values of bigoted Southerners and religious extremists. Sarah Palin is loathed by non-conservatives because she is the symbol of these “traditional values.”

The Republican Corporation cannot prosper in the future if it continues to sell “values” that more and more Americans regard as backwardness and bigotry. Yet the Republican Corporation cannot prosper in the future if it loses its socially conservative corporate identity.

Perhaps Democrat Industries will control the marketplace for years to come, until another corporate entity gains power in this country—one that can appeal to both socially conservative and socially libertarian customers, as the Reagan-led GOP once did. Hopefully, that won’t take too much time—because the folks who run Democrat Industries have had some pretty severe quality control issues in the past.

Thirty-five years ago this month, the edifice began to collapse.

“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook,” said President Richard Nixon at a televised press conference on November 17, 1973. “Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

Of course, Nixon was a crook, and less than a year later he would resign from the White House, his legacy saturated with scandal. Nixon’s disgraceful departure inflicted a wound upon the American psyche that would not be fully healed until the election of Ronald Reagan six years later. Some believed that Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential win would heal that wound, but the pain merely became worse and worse until Reagan applied the necessary balm.

Today, one must wonder if history is repeating itself. Will Barack Obama’s election be remembered as another botched effort to remedy the damage caused by a troubled Presidency? Will Obama’s successor be the person who actually heals our broken country?

It’s clear that outgoing President George W. Bush is the Nixon of the 21st century. No, Bush is nowhere near the moral reprobate that Nixon was, but the parallels between Bush and Nixon are fairly obvious. Both were elected, and re-elected, by voters disgusted with what they saw as rampant, aggressive secularism and an attempt by the left to destroy traditional American values. Both were ideologically incoherent, embracing a bizarre mix of liberal and conservative philosophies. Both were “big-government Republicans” whose actions demonstrated a deep scorn of conservative principles. Both men threw judicial bones to the right: Nixon placed William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court, while Bush gave conservatives Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

Both Nixon and Bush drew fire for prosecuting “pre-emptive” wars that progressives considered unnecessary and unwinnable. Both men were charged in the court of liberal public opinion with abusing power, demonstrating arrogance, disregarding the Constitution and promoting fear.

Nixon and Bush also severely damaged the reputation of the Republican Party. In the mid-1970s, the GOP was commonly viewed as a hothouse of corruption, hypocrisy, waste and incompetence; that’s the way many Americans think of the GOP today. Hatred of the Nixon-era GOP led to significant Democrat gains in the 1974 midterm and 1976 Presidential elections; hatred of the Bush-era GOP similarly benefited the Democrats in 2006 and 2008.

The Obama-John McCain contest was also quite similar to the Carter-Gerald Ford race of ’76. Like McCain in 2008, Ford was disliked by members of his own party for not being conservative enough (Ronald Reagan’s insurgent Presidential bid that year appealed to those who found Ford too moderate); non-Republicans looked at Ford as being a continuation of the Nixon years, just as McCain was seen by many Americans as a continuation of the Bush era. In order to appeal to the GOP’s conservative base, Ford selected Kansas Senator Bob Dole as his running mate instead of liberal Republican VP Nelson Rockefeller; thirty-two years later, McCain would make a similar decision, rejecting liberal Democrat Joseph Lieberman as his running mate and choosing conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin instead.

Carter was the Obama of 1976, a one-term Georgia governor who exploited the public’s disgust with Washington and promised political change. With a shrewd, effective campaign and the strong support of the mainstream media, Carter captured the imagination of much of the country; he was seen as a politician who could heal the ideological and racial divisions affecting the United States. Although Carter selected a solidly liberal running mate, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, he effectively positioned himself as a post-partisan figure; despite a high-profile stumble (his Playboy magazine interview was the “spread the wealth” moment of ’76), he managed to recover and take advantage of grievous mistakes made by the Ford campaign. On November 2, 1976, Carter defeated Ford in both the popular vote and the Electoral College; it had been the first time in twelve years that a Democrat had won a Presidential contest.

Of course, Carter went on to become a, well, less than successful President: the economy suffered under his watch, and his inept handling of the Iranian hostage crisis paved the way for Reagan’s November 1980 victory and a revival of the American spirit. Will Obama fail as Carter failed? No one can tell right now. Certainly, Obama has an IQ about 150 points higher than Carter, but we don’t yet know if he has learned the lessons of history. If he hasn’t, history will repeat itself in 2012—but who will play Reagan’s role then?