Ironically, Scott Brown’s election as U.S. Republican senator for Massachusetts was made possible by a manipulation of the law that backfired on Democrats. In 2004, Massachusetts law allowed the governor to appoint a senator to serve out John Kerry’s term if he was elected president. The now deceased Senator Ted Kennedy, at the time, urged that the law be changed to provide for a special election to fill the seat, removing power from Governor Mitt Romney to appoint a Republican. Mr. Kennedy assumed he would have final approval on the Democrat nominee in such an election. With Mr. Kennedy campaigning with and for that nominee, Massachusetts voters could be counted on to “vote the right way.”

Last year, when Kennedy was dying, a desperate attempt was made to reinstate the old law, giving Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint a Democrat to Mr. Kennedy’s seat. The legislature was only able to change the law enough to grant Patrick the power to seat a temporary appointee, with the special election still in place.

Democrats would like us to believe that Mr. Brown’s opponent in the race, Martha Coakley, simply ran a poor campaign. Although that’s true, there is reason to believe that Democrats strategized a low-key campaign to avoid firing up the opposition. Democrats did not realize that Mr. Brown’s campaign promise to be the 41st vote against the health care bill would resonate so strongly with voters.

Mr. Brown’s victory heralds a coming crisis for liberalism. The programs liberals propose go too far; Americans don’t want them. The stimulus bill implemented by liberals is not working. The public now perceives massive government spending with socialism.

The success of socialist policies depends on voters’ willingness to submerge self-interest for the “greater good.” But as Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher…or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” The American people are not ready to, and should not, deny their own self-interest.

Democrats, with the help of the media, took control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 election. By 2008, they had run President George W. Bush and even more Republicans out of town. At that point, if Democrats had concentrated on gaining the public’s confidence, they would have continued to gain ground.

A more measured strategy than steamrolling the stimulus bill through Congress would have bolstered the sense of well-being that was returning to a country weary of strident media criticism. Democrats’ bulldozing strategy incited public alarm. On top of that, the stimulus package didn’t work.

The American people have begun to realize that liberal programs are, at root, redistributionist and do not lead to real progress. Money collected by the government to be used for social programs prevents citizens from using their money productively and for their own self interest. This prevents economic improvement.

Voters are upset with Republicans as well as Democrats, but for a crucially different reason. A main plank of the pre-Depression Republican Party platform was to pay down debt. Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge cut taxes and used the resulting increased revenue to pay down our national debt. President Herbert Hoover raised taxes to cover increased spending, hoping also to pay down the debt. His failures helped push us from stock market crash into depression. Until Ronald Reagan, Republicans were no longer tax-cutters.

Reagan’s tax cuts did increase revenue, but he was unable to pay down debt as Harding and Coolidge did because he was waging and winning the Cold War while a Democrat Congress spent money on expanding domestic programs. Republicans learned the wrong lesson from Reagan’s relative success. Moderates thought that by spending less recklessly than Democrats, Republicans could gain favor with the public and become the majority party.

Americans have finally become alarmed about our national debt. Republicans should return to the kinds of tax cuts that will naturally stimulate the economy—and then use that increased revenue to pay down the debt. Women and minority voters especially, struggling to hold together their families’ finances, would vote for the Republican Party if we make clear our message and our intent.

Conservatives can engage in the overdue conversation on race with confidence. For Republicans, acknowledging past injustice is not an admission of guilt. Historically, Republicans are the party of President Abraham Lincoln, not of segregation and Jim Crow, the name often used to describe the segregation laws, rules, and customs which arose after Reconstruction ended in 1877 and continued until the mid-1960s. Republicans broke the Democratic filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in the ’60s. Democrats behave as if black votes are for sale and can be bought by offering government handouts, but perceptive voters of all ethnicities understand that raising taxes, no matter what program the government claims the money will be used for, leads to trickle-down poverty, and that government handouts create dependence, not freedom.

Democrats are now on the defensive because voters recognize that policies such as the healthcare plan, cap and trade, and the proposed Federal budget threaten to deliver a devastating economic blow to America. The key for Republicans in attracting voters, including women and minorities, is to point out that acting in one’s own self-interest is good for any society, and essential to a free one.