[Thom Pain]

I agree. The approach is to vote for the closest fit (Republican) and then pummel them to move more and more to the conservative policies/programs. I believe the Harriet Myers and Dubai ports episodes proved the merit of raising our voices.

[deport]

There are 435 little chiefs and 100 big chiefs that control and run this government to a large degree. They stay in office most of the time as long as they desire. Few get voted out in any one cycle. It is their power, ego and pork projects that ultimately keep the cycle going.

Yes, I agree that hammering on them as hard as you can will help when it is organized across the nation. But it is so hard to have much impact on a congress critter that has some 635,000 constituents and usually something less than 35% or so of them continue to send him/her back every two years.