Morning Sam,
The good news is that the GOP is simply better at being the minority party. We never really got the hang of being in charge after 94.
I do feel just sick about what the troops must be thinking. They're going to be expected to take a loss they didn't have to take.
We were lousy at being a majority party, for sure. Completely forgot what we stood for, if anything. I hope being the minority will bring out some leadership from somewhere...I don't see much of it except for Giuliani, who's not in office, and not conservative in some ways, and our own weirdo, McCain, also not a pure conservative.
My gut feeling is that Bush's failure to win decisively against the "insurgents" in Iraq, combined with the MSM's portrayal of things as being worse than the reality are the main causes of this little debacle. But our guys' failure to stand firmly on "conservative" issues didn't help much either. Bush doesn't make his case often enough either.
I'd like to hear from our guys in Iraq on this; hope they are more ticked than depressed. It's got to be a morale buster, though, since I understand most of them think they're getting it done.
The culture we're all immersed in bears a subtext that liberalism has a natural entitlement to power. Conservatives (non-liberals) are usurpers, and never really can legitimately exercise power, even if they by accident wound up with the most votes.
I see two years of quasi-parlimentary government, with a continuation of a judicial oligarchy as a backup means of staying in power. My biggest hope is that the RATS' moonbats won't be hushed, so we can see their treasonous lunacy on display every day.
Michigan voted to continue being #50 in terms of economic performance, and #1 in unemployment. The 800-pound gorilla in the living room that nobody dared mention was the public employee unions, which continue to grow and prosper at the expense of everything else.
Two small rays of hope were the near-landslide approval of the anti-affirmative-action constitutional ammendment (which the University of Michigan announced it will ignore), and the defeat of the ammendment that would build in inflation-proof funding increases for the teachers unions.