Posted on 11/07/2006 11:18:51 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
President Bush struck a businesslike tone Tuesday night as the Republicans lost control of the House, making plans to call the woman poised to become speaker of a Democratic House majority.
Bush, unaccustomed to political defeat, planned a morning phone call to Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi and made plans to give his take on the midterm election results at an afternoon news conference.
Asked if the president was surprised that the House was headed for Democratic control, Snow said it wasn‘t "a slap-on-the-forehead kind of shock."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsone.ca ...
"But we got the Gang of 14 because the Republicans were too chicken to go nuclear."
Now the shoe is on the other foot. Perhaps the Gang of 14 was more far-sighted than advocates of the nuclear option.
The dems don't have 60 votes in the Senate.
Being far sighted is a pretty rare thing, in American politics these days.
I think political infighting and name calling among Republicans has been harmful. I remember Reagan's 11th commandment; long forgotten these days.
I think the electorate decided the Republicans had had a majority for 6 years, and probably expected more than they got.
It is time for a more unified Republican party. I'd start with some new faces at the top. Frist and Hastert should give way to better spokesmen.
A DEm senate won't take a very conservative USSC nominee seriously. He or she won't get out of committee.
Let's all face it...the across the board Republican defeat is largely self-inflicted. Our Party has pretty much had two years of controlling both the Presidency and the Congress, and essentially it pissed it all away with stupid stuff like:
The Bloated $287 billion 2005 Transportation Bill (Ted Stevens' Bridge to No Where)
Not Making the Tax Cuts Permanent
Bill Frist Caving in to the Gang of 14 over Judicial Appointments
The Harriet Myers Debacle
Ethics Questions (DeLay, Cunningham, Ney)
President Bush's Proposed Guest Worker/Amnesty Program, Poor Immigration Enforcement, and Congress' Failure to Close the Border
The GOP not laying the blame where it squarely belonged during the Hurricane Katrina mess (Nagin/Blanco got a free pass)
Overall Weak Leadership from Frist and Hastert
Letting the Demo'Rats paint Iraq and the Global War on Terrorism as a collective lost cause
The good news in all of this is, based upon the 'Rats propensity for backbiting and scheming, is that Pelosi and Reid will have their hands full trying to keep their own jobs and their own Party from flying apart, especially after they will prove unable to pull our troops out of Iraq, which will ultimately cause the anti-war freaks to turn on them like pit bulls.
My .02 worth of analysis for today...
VR
This next SCOTUS nominee will be fun. I am prepared to be pleasantly suprised.
The committee should be split 9-9, right? If the vote goes down the middle, what happens?
If we don't maintain control of the Senate, you are probably right.
If we have another John Roberts on hold, i.e. someone who's got a record, but not too much of one, and someone who's so incredibly smart he makes the D's look stupid when they try to attack him, we might be able to get him through a D controlled Senate.
But another smart, qualified, but less impressive Judge with a longer record like Alito? Forget it.
LOL. Thanks! I needed a laugh tonight.
But now the Dems can simply stonewall whomever Bush sends up to the Senate.
Bush consistently and constantly turned the other cheek, in fact he turned both cheeks, and the Dems have now kicked him in them.
Bush has been largely ineffective since winning re-election. Unless he and Rove figure out a way to improve their communications strategy, Bush will become a certified lameduck.I hope this election puts to rest the Rove-Is-A-Genius theory.
Basically, the Rove proposition goes like this:
Concede all the issues to the media and the rats, and make up for it with "organizational muscle".
That was the plan, and that was the failure, and the failure was built into the plan.
No more conservatives anywhere if the Fairness Doctrine passes.
Bush couldn't care less.
The Republicans would have swept to a huge victory if they had not alienated their base support by their:
1. Failure to close the Mexican border and halt illegal immigration,2. Failure to nullify the effects of the Kelo decision--immediately, and
3. Expansion of federal entitlements to include prescription drugs!
An across-the-board filibuster in a closely divided Senate will do that. One of the things that has irritated me over the last couple of years is that the word "filibuster" has largely disappeared from the MSM. The typical storyline has been "Senate rejects" or "Senate fails to pass" or "Republicans fail." This has been coupled with the by-now casual assertion in many stories that Senate rules require 60 votes for passage. And so the "ineffective Republicans" theme was sold.
My prediction for the next two years: the word filibuster will be revived, and the stories will all be about an obstructionist Republican minority.
The jubilation over the Republican victories of 2000 and 2004 gradually turned to dismay and then to scorn as the Republican base realized how foolishly the Republican Congress and Administration behaved on these subjects.
Had they behaved differently, the Republicans would have maintained the jubilation of their base support and attracted undecideds and perhaps some Democrats to their support.
The constant drumbeat of scorn from the Left--notably the overtly pro-Democrat "Mainstream Newsmedia", academia, Hollywood, and foreign governments, who do not have the best interests of the American people and the United States in mind--kept the Democrat base support energized, but it was, for the most part, ignored by the rest of the electorate.
It is the Republicans who did themselves in. And the American people while they were at it.
Had they not been such fools, they would have swept to an easy victory--in 2006 AND 2008!
He was a big part of why we lost. Too bad he didn't get his head up and out of the sand sooner.
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