The problem is the Rats have gone so far to the left, we get the watered-down Republicans that really should be in the Rat party.
Simple.
Start voting these people out. Chafee, Voinivich, Hagel. Vote them out. Vote them out of primaries. Vote them out of the general. But only those that stab us in the back. If you vote the entire Republican Party out the only lesson they will believe learned is that they were too "conservative". It would be a lie but they'd believe it.
Only vote out those that betray us. If the other Reps hang onto their seats while the McCain-ites fall one by one they'll get the picture.
I spent a great deal of my adulthood in sales. A salesman without a killer instinct is a poverty-stricken failure. The same goes for pols, it seems.
At the beginning of President Bush's second term -- can it possibly be such a short time ago? -- the Republicans had the leftist, traitorous Dems exactly where they wanted them, and should have moved in for the kill.
As it turns out, they haven't the closing skills to make the sale, nor do they have the instinct to know when it is time to go for the jugular. The great comeback of the Democratic Party begins in 2006, and I, for one, figure the weaklings that didn't take them out when they had the chance will get exactly what they deserve: a one-way ticket to obscurity.