For the GOP, it really wasn’t that bad of an election, considering the circumstances. Amid corruption, scandal, and mismanagement of affairs both at home and abroad, Republicans still managed to pull in 45.7% of the popular vote. That they did so is a testament to the enduring conservatism of America’s electoral landscape.

Afghanistan used to be a simple narrative: We’re going after the bad guys. It had a mission that could be summed up in two words: happy hunting. There was a simple exit strategy: Put Osama Bin Laden’s head on a pike, light up cigars, and slap each other on the back as we saunter off to the C-130’s and fly home.

The french politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, upon seeing a crowd marching through Paris, supposedly once said: “There go my people. I must find out where they’re going so I can lead them.” In the wake of their humiliating defeat in Massachusetts, many Democratic strategists are now embracing the spirit of Ledru-Rollin, urging their party to adopt a more “Main Street” tone in order to survive the mid-term elections this November.

In the beginning, it was nothing more than knee-jerk catharsis, drawn from the tattered, frustrated, and disenfranchised remnants of small-c conservatives and angry libertarians. It was disorganized and chronically off-message, defenseless against being used as a public soapbox by every ‘birther’ conspiracist and one-world-government loon that didn’t feel he had a large enough audience on the Ron Paul internet forums. It was derided as far-right fringe, dismissed as corporate astroturf, and joyfully mocked as latently homosexual.

On September 25, at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, President Obama revealed to the world that Iran has been covertly constructing an uranium enrichment facility outside the holy city of Qom. Flanked by his allies Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama demanded that Iran disclose the entirety of its nuclear activities “or be held accountable.”

It seems odd to write advice “to the graduating class of 2009” when I myself am one of the graduates. If you’re reading this during Commencement, I am currently somewhere between Dublin and Dubai, about to begin my new life as a consultant in the Middle East. When I started writing for The Tech back in September, I’d hoped to lay out the beliefs that make me a conservative. Nineteen articles later, I’ve commented on the 2008 election, written policy pieces on everything from education to health care to economics to foreign policy, and even tossed in a few articles on my favorite subject, energy — but I still haven’t gotten to write that defining piece that goes beyond policy prescriptions to core political philosophy. This is the 20th and final article that I’ll written for The Tech. I guess it’s now or never.

Imagine for a moment that you are a commercial bank called the Papa Bear Bank Company. You accept deposits from large businesses and use the money to make loans to other businesses and consumers. The interest on the money you loan out is a little bit higher than the interest you pay to your depositors, and as a result you make a tidy bit of revenue. You use this revenue to pay your workers, dole out dividends to your shareholders, and host the occasional junket in Yellowstone.

It was all the way back in the middle of November when I first wrote about the brewing issue of appointments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To catch you up: the NRC is led by a five-man commission, with one of them serving at the President’s discretion as the chairman of the body. The commission controls the high level nuclear regulatory policy in the United States, and as such plays an important role in the development of nuclear power.

Basketball-player-cum-Secretary-of-Education Arne Duncan recently outlined the president’s proposal to reform our nation’s schools, and for those who follow education policy, the plan was a frustrating let-down. Duncan’s plan consisted of two major points: increasing the resources put towards early childhood education and extending the school year. Both are failed strategies that will significantly raise educational costs without significantly improving results.

“We will extend a hand if you unclench your fist.”