SwiftVets.com

[shawa]

Well, I have been shell-shocked, but the numbness is starting to wear off. I am not so surprised about the House. A lot of the Dem wins were the result of Republicans who were mad at the unfettered rise in spending and so voted for the Democrat who promised to bring spending under control. These are blue-dog Dems who have to be true to their campaign promises, so that could be a good thing.

However my greatest upset is the loss of the Senate. This is disastrous in that there are two Supreme Court Justices who will probably retire. And we will have Leahy as head of the Judiciary Committee. We will not be able to get the conservative Justices that I had hoped for.
Also, I think the Patriot Act is going to be reworked and NSA intercepts could be severely limited. This is all under the auspicous the the Judiciary Committee, which will now be controlled by liberals Leahy, Kennedy, Feingold, Schumer, Durbin, Feinstein et al.

God help us!!
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776)

[Me#1You#10]

[baldeagle]

The next two years will be one long liberal driven cluster****. Fortunately they do not have a veto-proof majority, so there should not be too much outrageous legislation foisted on us, but there will be one congressional investigation/hearing after another, in every committee which has the authority to caal hearings and subpeona witnesses. The executive branch won't have time to get anything done because they will be spending all their time answering fool questions on Capitol Hill.
May God watch out for us.
_________________
"In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington

[I B Squidly]

Yeah, cacophonia in the House.

Stalled Senate but it's been that.

Still chuckling about Rangel's draft. He could get Kerry to sign on so this time, unlike Viet Nam we only draft full-time college students; you know, just to help those dummies at the front fill sand bags and muck the bilges.

J D Hayworth? I'm a little surprised but then I was a little surprised when he, a loud sportscaster first got the job. His district includes snotty Scottsdale and ASU's Tempe. It was more style than substance with JD. Too, Dems spent big money the last week.
_________________
"KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!"

-Wlm Shakespeare

[JN173]

[Schadow]

A little-heralded item in the election is the fact that the first ever Muslim has been chosen for the House of Representatives. Keith Ellison will be sworn in January representing Minnesota's 5th District. Ellison was a long time supporter of Farrakahn's Nation of Islam and has been vigorously endorsed by CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations.

The taxpayer-funded PBS 'humorist', Minnesota's Garrison Keillor, who regularly laces his broadcasts with Lib points of view, is undoubtedly exultant.

An old piece in the Weekly Standard, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman", by Power Line's Scott Johnson, reviews some of Ellison's formative years:

[baldeagle]

[Doll]

[LimaCharlie]

Goodbye Iraq

Goodbye 2nd Amendment - Bush has said he will sign any gun restriction bills sent to him.
_________________
I was going to become an anarchist, but they had too many rules.

[AMOS]

BUSH SAID WHAT?

[Anker-Klanker]

LC, is there really evidence of this:

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

This is something that is completely beyond my comprehension.

Some people who we elected to go to Congress and act like conservatives did not do what we elected them to do.

So we "punish" them by voting for liberal Democrats, Independents, Greens, "anybody-but-conservatives?"

Where in the world did this cut-your-nose-off philosophy arise and who in their right mind ever had the thought that those conservatives can best be taught to be conservatives by helping to vote the lunatic fringe into this kind of power?

I keep reading comments to the effect that the turncoat conservatives had it coming, that maybe this thrashing will wake them up. What the hell good does it do now that they're out of office?

Where is the logic of this? I've tried and tried and I'll be dipped if I can figure it out.

Maybe I'm too hardline in what I consider to be non-negotiable... I don't know. This mindset is simply mind-boggling, to me.

Good Lord - Pelosi? Rangel? Leahy? All of them deranged but we just handed them the congress on a silver platter. Unbelievable.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[Schadow]

Hugh Hewitt has a piece which heavily leans on McCain for losing the Senate and the Cunningham, Ney and Foley scandals for the House debacle. It makes some sense. Following are some snips but the full article is worth a read:

[Anker-Klanker]

There's a huge amount of justifying (rationalizing, really) going on among Republicans to explain how they lost so badly. Much of this effort I read as attempting to fix the blame on somebody, anybody, other than themselves, and not honest attempts to really understand what happened.

For example, Conservatives are all a-roar about how the Republicans "lost their way." While that is a legitimate complaint for Conservatives, it does not explain why they lost the election; it is, however, an attempt to absolve Conservatives of any blame. But if you buy into this "lost the way" argument you're fundamentally stating that it was mainly hard-line Conservatives that crossed the line and supported Democrats . I don't buy that argument for a minute; hard-line Conservatives just don't - no matter how disaffected they become - decide to support the likes of Pelosi, Dean, Reid, Rangle, Murtha, etc.

As much as I like and respect Hugh Hewitt, I don't buy his argument that it was the Gang of 14 that was to blame either, and for similar reasons. The numbers and motivation just do not compute.

The more realistic way to look at this is to recognize that at the last election in 2004 - the last reliable and credible poll of the American thinking BTW - the Republican coalition was a razor-thin majority. With a margin that thin, one would think that a sane Republican party would try to retain and grow all the elements that constituted that coalition. Instead, the in-fighting and trash-talking began as Conservatives tried to take exclusive control of the Republican coalition, and enforce the Conservative ideology on everyone. This led, I believe, many non-Conservatives (e.g., Independents, moderate Republicans, legal immigrant Hispanics, and blue-dog Democrats) to see something very ugly within the Republican ranks, and they just told us what they think about it all. These non-committed-to-Conservatism Republicans were, of course, hugely aided and abetted by the MSM propaganda, and by the better ability of the Democrat's own coalition to appear as a united front.

In short we've just learned - if we'd only open our eyes and ears - that political majorities are achieved when compromise and inclusion are valued, and not by principles of ideological purity and exclusion (which are unfortunately a big part of the drum-beat of the hard-line Conservatives). IMHO Republicans lost this election for three principle reasons: 1) a partisan MSM, 2) a politically superior effort by the Democrats, and 3) a lack of common values among all Republican voters. Based on comments I'm finding all over the Internet I fear that it's going to be a very long time before Republicans and Conservatives figure it out, and return to power.

[greasepaint]

Either, Bush sells out to the Democrats,
or,
it will be very ugly.