Election Review
by Jeremy 'Panda Man' Weidenhof · 11/08/2006 1:31 pmIt was a boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine, RINO-raping kind of election.
House Republicans have not lost this many seats since 1974, and Senate Republicans have probably had their worst election since 1986. Republicans lost six governorships. It was a comprehensive rout. No Democratic incumbents lost. Liberal and conservative Republicans both went down.
Republicans lost roughly 29 seats in the House.
The editors at National Review have offered their breakdown of this beating at the ballot box. Essentially, Republicans went adrift and gave voters little reason to turn out for them.
It is congressional Republicans, more than the president, who are responsible for the loss of the party’s reformist credentials. Republicans were perceived not just as the party in government, but as the party of government. That perception, deadly for the relatively conservative party in our politics, was accurate.
Republicans in general got soft and it cost them. Iraq was also a factor. But what happens now? How will Bush respond to what will surely be a hostile Democrat-controlled Congress? Will the no-“no” President suddenly discover his veto pen?
We trust that there will now be no shortage of Bush vetoes. Democratic control of the House, and possibly the Senate, mean, however, that he will mostly be vetoing bills that the Democrats have designed to be politically costly to reject. Bush will have to find some areas in which he can cooperate with some Democrats. We hope that a pro-family tax reform is one such area.
But all is not ideological roses in Democrat-land either.
The Democrats face some tough choices themselves. One reason that they won was that they ran more conservative candidates, and especially cultural conservatives, than they have run in many years. If those Democrats are neatly folded into a Pelosi party, they won’t hold their seats.
And finally, a word of advice for the Republican Party.
We will not pretend to have any detailed plan for conservatives to move forward just now. But it may be worthwhile to state the obvious, since Republicans in Washington have been quite accomplished in ignoring it. President Bush will have to figure out a way to salvage a failing Iraq policy, and congressional Republicans will have to come up with a reason for holding office beyond the perks they will no longer enjoy.
My own advice? Bush should have imported a few more illegals to vote for his party of “compassionate conservatism,” since it is obviously work Americans just wouldn’t do.
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I’ll be happy to say why the republicans got massacred. They failed to lead as constitutionalist conservatives as was expected by the people that put them into office in the first place. They simply sat on their asses doing squat.
We have a Republican party who is funding Iraq way beyond defense. Our mission creep has including both nation building and rebuilding the infrastructure to a level they didn’t even have before the war. And we’re doing it with high priced American Civilians, not low priced Iraq Civilians. No wonder they are mad. They are unemployed and we are going broke doing it.
We have a Republican party who inherited a balanced budget, ran it up as high as the eye can see and then bragged about cutting it in half.
We have a single party Republican government who ignored the pleas of the people to close the border, would not deal with illegal immigrants, and woudl not eliminate ALL benefits people who are here illegally. They won’t deal with the anchor baby situation, either. And the constution not only requires a person to be born here, but requires the parents to be “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. I maintain that illegals are subject to the jurisdiction of their homeland, not the US, so their children are not US citizens, and our only duty is to return them back to that homeland.
We have a Republican government who has bought into the notion that if “It’s for the CHILLLLDREN”, no wasted dollar is too much to spend.
Our Republican government is so knee jerk in their reaction, that they authorized billions of spending for new electronic voting systems that are worse or no better than those they replaced. Cool heads could have prevailed, and common sense about money. Just because a few old folks in Florida can’t seem to punch through a paper ballot is not a reason to throw out ALL paper sytems in the country. Ours worked just fine, and scantron systems must work because all the schools use them routinely.
We have a president who was never a conservative, is not a conservative, and can’t find his veto pen, even when the so-called conservative party sends him bills laden with pork. He won’t find it with the Dems either
I am a loyal Republican, and I don’t care they lost. They got exactly what they deserved. Why should someone vote for a Republican who acts like a Democrat when they can get the real thing?
Well, people were screaming, throw the bums out, let’s hope they like what they get. I doubt it. The Democrats don’t have a plan except for enacting revenge on the Republicans. Their hate of the Republicans, in general and President Bush, in specific, will eat them up!!!!!!
Robert,
No shortage of hate in your letters either.
Simple
Reply to No. 4:
But I don’t have the liberal media to help me spew my hate. I only have LST. Oh!!! And, I have my “Top Ten” lists which you probably interpret my humor as hate mail—well, so be it!!!
#2 The constitution says that anybody born here is a U.S. citizen. The bright side to this fiasco is that there will no longer be an immigration debate because they are all going to be legal now. I just hope W makes a big deal of the day he signs that amenesty into law. That way the people who will be affected will remember that a Republican signed it into law.
#6 I’m slow, will you point out the part of the constitution that says that. Thanks
The 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
where they strayed…
they ignored their base
voters did not vote for republicans so they can like democrats
did not communicate the issues more clearer
The Republican party is not, and never has been, the “Conservative Party”. It is, and always has been, a conglomeration of persons of widely differing philosophies with a common enemy.
More recently the party has been led by others whose only goal is to be elected and remain in office. They have no principles beyond reelection and inevitably their true colors show. It is NOT enough to fool some of the people some of the time, as this election proves.
Nick Lampson had the last laugh.
This man fell victim to Delay’s redestricting scheme and today he would be representing the very district Mr. Delay held for ever.
What goes around comes around.
# 03 Robert
It’s time for you to jump the ship and join the party which truly represent you.
Watch that blood pressure.
DELETED BY THE MODERATOR FOR TROLLING AND FLAMING.
One mass gloat and troll is quite enough