By all accounts, Tuesday was a bad day to be a Republican.

Worst case scenario? Not quite.

A wake-up call for the right? Hopefully.

Sure, there will be plenty of analysis in the coming weeks about what caused Tuesday’s rout — everything from the choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate, to the fact that Republicans came prepared for a fight over the war in Iraq and war against terrorism, not the economy, and much more — are sure to be cited.

But, my fellow Republicans, let’s face it — this is two in a row. The election of 2008 has simply been a replay of 2006’s mid-term election, with precisely the same results.

Obviously, something’s not working.

That something, it turns out, is Rovian politics and the specter of the Bush Administration. Both have to go.

The Republican Party has, for too long, tied itself to the anchor of a political machine built around fear — fear of terrorism, fear of the left’s social agenda, fear of socialism, fear of, well, practically anything, it seems. In addition, we’ve been asked to believe — and, owing to fear, have believed — that we must support any measure introduced in the name of national security, Patriot Act-style. Yeah, this is the party of small government.

Yes, fear is an excellent motivation, but it’s only a motivation in the short term. It’s also the most despised of motivations, short of actual bodily harm. There’s a reason that Franklin Roosevelt told us to fear it.

More than that, the Republican Party, owing to the campaign of fear, has appeared to run a campaign against the people, rather than for them. The Patriot Act may have started it, but wiretapping, secret prisons and no-bid contracts to Haliburton haven’t helped the image any.

In short, the Republican Party, owing mostly to the Bush Administration, has become the party of negativity. Rather than discussing issues on their merits and rather than being open and forthcoming, it has become the party seeking to hide its dirty laundry and skeletons from the American public, lest they be damned as hypocrites, unethical or worse. Instead, they’ve been damned by standing in the dark shadows that were their own creation. When America clamored the loudest for light to be cast into these dark crevices, the resistance to disclosure became all the more furious.

It wasn’t just the White House, though.

The party has issues that run much further into the rank-and-file. Traditional family values are a major component of conservative politics in America, and yet the disgraces of recent times — Mark Foley, Larry Craig — have belonged to the right. At that point, any attempt to make any argument about traditional family values is met with and drowned in a hurricane of ad hominem attacks. If the Republicans intend to play the music, they must also dance the dance.

The last few months have shown us just how far the Grand Old Party has drifted from its moorings in the verdant land of Reagan. A $700 billion bailout? State ownership — even partially — in the banking system? Reagan, the man who campaigned endlessly and successfully to end socialism and its communist love child the world-over, and who abhorred what he called the “barbarism” of the socialist state, would be appalled. Disappointing only begins to describe. Thanks, Henry Paulson.

Sarah Palin referred a few weeks ago to the “real America.” It can’t help but be wondered what the “real” Republican Party would think of such flagrant and rampant prostitution of conservative political, social and economic ideals.

What, then, for my party?

It is time for a house-cleaning, something the electorate was all too happy to hand out Tuesday. Many of the old faces are gone now — Sununu, Dole and soon the Bushes, Hank Paulson and the rest of the White House gang. Indeed, it seems that the conservative side of the aisle, dealt a body blow in the mid-term election two years ago, has now been gutted — or perhaps a better word is “erased.” The Rovian Revolution has replaced and stifled the idealism and progress of the Reagan Revolution, and, predictably, has miscarried in grand fashion. That the conservative party should fall so out of favor in a country that identifies itself as being center-right testifies to this in volumes. It, then, is time for a New Reagan Revolution.

Who, then, will lead it?

The old guard — the holdovers from the Bush Administration, the propagators of the divisiveness and unilateralism that has cost the party and the nation so dearly — must be excised, and quickly. In their place, men like John Boehner of Ohio and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky must come forward and make obvious their intentions to clear the air on the right side of the aisle. It is time to open the windows of the right and let the light shine in. It is time because, as Reagan himself said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on…”

— Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.