Before they happen, every national election seems critically important for the future direction of the country. The ‘mostest importantest election everrrr,’ if you will. But, add a little hindsight and it becomes clear that not all elections even came remotely close to that bar. Add a little more, and sometimes it’s easy to wonder why we were even concerned at all. Sure, they're all meaningful in some sense or another, but looking at history it does become quite obvious that some elections are more equal (important!) than others.

So what really makes an election ‘important’ from a conservative perspective? It’s a subjective question, but in general I think it comes down to a mix of several factors, all of which probably should be present to some degree or another to qualify. Here they are, in no particular order:

Ability to win - Some will disagree here, but from my perspective if we were never going to win in the first place it probably shouldn’t qualify for the purposes of this thought exercise. No matter what any of us would have done, in hindsight the outcome of some elections was likely always going to be the same.

For example, John McCain was never going to beat Barack Obama in 2008. After the Bush second term miscues and the economic crisis, that blue wave would always hit and hit hard. And frankly, for the Bush sins as well as the unforgivable sin of nominating someone with McCain’s policies and worldview, Republicans deserved to take that medicine, as hard as it was to swallow.

Going back to........

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