The key to this is found in another place where the ancient scriptures mention a wilderness.  We learn about this from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, when in the 40^th chapter of his book we come across the vital phrase, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” 

No doubt Winston Churchill, another frequent wilderness wanderer, identified with this little phrase during his years as a political has-been in the 1930s.  He had no power, no position, and no prospects. 

But he found his “voice” – and began to warn his countrymen about Hitler and dangers to come.  Later, when he once again found himself in forced exile, having been voted out of office in the Labor sweep just a couple of months after the victory had been won in Europe, he found his “voice” again.   This time he did not speak in the House of Commons, but rather in the gymnasium of a small college in the American mid-west.  From that unlikely pulpit in the wilderness he cried out about an “iron curtain.”

The Republicans have clearly found the wilderness.  Now they need to find their voice.

The GOP needs to figure out what it wants to be if and when it grows back up.  Are ideas like limited government, the free market, and at least an interest in understanding the relationship between the morality of personal responsibility and self-discipline and the ills of the larger culture – now officially gone forever? 

The word paradigm comes from the Greek language and the word paradeigma.  It basically means a perception, or frame of reference – a lens through which to interpret reality.   Author Steven Covey in his book, The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (hint: the eighth habit is “finding your voice”), insists that “if you want to make minor incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude.  But if you want to make significant, quantum improvements, work on paradigms.”

The time for tweaking is past.  As the nation readies itself to enter a new era of “bold experimentation” under an activist Obama administration, it is time for the party now finding itself in the political wilderness to find what it has lost.  By definition, something lost is not something new – it is something once possessed. 

Republicans can find their voice during the wilderness period, but to do so will require a willingness to have the wisdom and humility to make a paradigm shift, one that surely involves a quantum journey back to the future.  The must find what once worked – and has been lost.

And if anyone thinks that the idea of going to the past to find something that will resonate in the future is not politically feasible, please remember this: America just elected a guy who advocates policies and programs that failed 75 years ago.