"What we seek is a political realignment"

A Very Important post from Powerline.
We recently posted William Voegeli's response to our series of posts by Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe. In his response, Voegeli challenged Professor Rahe "to help render the conservative movement more strategically acute." Professor Rahe writes:

We should begin by turning to American history for guidance. What we seek is a political realignment - predicated on a dramatic shift in public opinion - accompanied by a radical shift in public policy.

This has happened before, and it has nearly always involved a return to and reinterpretation of America's first principles. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt all appealed to the equality principle embedded in the Declaration of Independence, and the movements that they led charged their
opponents with an abandonment of this principle, contending that liberty was threatened by monarchical, aristocratic, or oligarchical power. You really must read it all. We need the guidance.