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This is all silliness. The exit polls already answered this question. The voters were asked the most important issue that drove their vote that day.

It was not abortion. It was not guns. It was not immigration. It was not the economy and It Was Not IRAQ.

It was corruption scandals. Period. Full stop.

There is no ideological message whatsoever to be found in the election. None. It does not say you need to move to the right. It does not say you need to move to the left.

It says only that the GOP should not have had corruption scandals. Get rid of them, find some dirt on the Dems and get explicit indictments, and it all turns around without the party moving in either direction.

find some dirt on the Dems

You don't have to look very hard for that, unless you're relying on the MSM: Rep. William Mollahon, Rep. William Jefferson, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Senator Harry Reid, etc. But the media all ignored these scandals to focus solely on the GOP's indiscretions, nearly all of whom resigned while the above named Demo Low Lives won re-election and are still in Congress. THAT is why the GOP paid the price for ethics in this election while the Dems. had theirs utterly ignored and were rewarded with Congressional control instead. We live in a country that's now a combination of Orwell and Alice in Wonderland.

Of course the DNC has scandals, but social conservatives reject even the mere mention of impropriety even as its leadership is mired in it.

On the other hand, the DNC says "so what, we're only human?", and the voters accept them.

The long and the short, if you're going to set yourself up as the party of family values and morals, you best hold up to scrutiny.

I admire Bill Bennett, but it's unfortunate that the man who wrote a book called "Virtues" turns out to have a problem with gambling.

..find some dirt on the Dems and get explicit indictments

At the risk of cliche, the vast percentage of the (anti-GOP) news reporting media simply refused to report the "dirt" on most Democrat candidates in the '06 elections.

I realize that sounds lame, and perhaps was not the ultimate reason in some races.

But in 90-percent of the races, I saw a media which went out of its way to continually portray GOP candidates as duplicit in corruption, while at the same time refusing to report any negative aspects of the D-candidates.

Add to the mix the fact that between 10-20 percent of the GOP base REALLY was demoralized (and stayed home) and you have the makings of a Democrat sweep.

And that's what happened.

In my district, the winning Democrat candidate got about the SAME NUMBER of votes as the Dem candidate did in '04 and '02.

But the Republican incumbant got 15-PERCENT FEWER votes than he did in '04 and '02.

It's not hard to extrapolate that the GOP (again, thanks in part to the media brainwash) base was indeed demoralized .... over the Bush Iraq war explanation, Foley the perv and other scandals, and the seemingly greedy GOP Congress which spent waaaay too much money in appeasing the Dem libs.

It was not the economy and It Was Not IRAQ.

As for your claim that "it was not Iraq," I must strenuously disagree.

The entire month of October was filled with AP and network story after story about "record high US deaths" in Iraq, the "most since '03" or whatever it was.

There were countless Iraq misery stories, and no coverage to speak of about any good coming from the war.

Of course the Bush media response team either was awful, or ineffective, or was shunned by the news reporting media.

By reporting media, I mean the AP, Reuters, NYTimes, ABC, CBS, CNN, BCC, WASH-post, and even Fox to some extent.

Heck, I am a big supporter of the reason's behind the US Iraq war, and EVEN I was demoralized about what seemed to be an endless Iraq conflict.

By using the phrase, "Stay the Course," and "we have got to win", I feel Bush doomed the GOP by making it look like he was simply going to let hundreds of brave American soldiers get killed each month while REFUSING to consider any changes to US strategy.

Bush should have announced some general 'drawdown' timetable, and he should have said he expects the US to be out of the picture within two years, or whatever.

Then, if things change on the ground in Iraq, BUSH COULD ALSO CHANGE.

There would be no harm, I believe, in delaying any announced withdrawal.

But at the same time, it would have given millions of Americans, conservative and otherwise, HOPE THAT the war would not go on forever and ever.

It was corruption scandals. Period. Full stop.

I must add the fact that the GOP was absolutely AWFUL in how it handled the illegal immigration issue.

In fact, it (the GOP) angered both sides, conservatives AND liberals.

Conservatives were steaming mad (as was I) because the GOP congress in essence refused to build a southern border wall, and also refused to get serious about stopping the rampant illegal invasion.

Oh yeah, the GOP House eventually 'blocked' the GOP Senate's plan for amnesty.

And the GOP controlled House passed a plan to build a 700-mile wall.

But then it failed to fund it properly, which could have let a future Congress squash the whole thing.

So not only were lib-Dem weenies mad at the GOP over immigration, conservatives were also steaming mad.

I refused (and still do refuse) to donate one freakin' cent to the national RNC due to its idiotic stance on illegal immigration.

Again, if only 5-percent of the GOP base refuses to come out and vote, the Republican Party will lose many close races.

And that's what happened in '06.

The GOP lost all close races, and of course, some not so close.

“It Was Not IRAQ.”

What? All the polls taken in the months prior to the election, and since, place the War in Iraq as a top issue among voters.

It’s time President Bush and the Republican Party accept the American public was not satisfied with their execution of the war. Americans are not afraid of war, and the overwhelming majority fully support our troops. They are dreadfully impatient with politicians that demand we fight a war with less than our full capability. The war should have been concluded in days or weeks, not fought for months and years with no end in sight.

It’s the same story with the War on Terrorism. Terrorism by definition is not merely the culmination of physical acts of violence. Terrorism is also the threat of such acts used to coerce an intended victim. We haven’t seen the 9-11 type attacks repeated, but President Bush and the Republicans have not eliminated the sources of the terrorist threats. Instead, he has been the overseer of a government that jumps through hoops with each threat at great government expense, disruption of daily life within our nation, and hardship on businesses. The terrorists don’t even have to commit another barbaric attack on our nation. They can just leak a threat, sit back, and watch as our government inconveniences our population and spends vast resources on something that the terrorists have may never intended to happen. That's what terrorism does, it terrorizes. That's what Islamic Jihad is! It only stops when silenced. Instead of permanently silencing the terrorist bastards the administration tells us to expect the terrorism to continue for 50 or 60 years, if not longer.

The only way to execute a war is by unleashing our full military capability against the enemy. The only way to stop the terrorists is by silencing them forever. Lacking those objectives many voters were left to ponder other possible remedies. Unfortunately, the Democratic remedies will fail to produce the desired results just as well as the Republican remedies did. But what the heck, voters, are tired of failure, and were left grasping at straws.

Instead of focussing on democrat corruption our very own side spent all their time bashing the President, and the republicans in general.

They fed into the media spin that the republicans are the problem.

These elite know-it-alls betrayed the President, the troops and our allies.

Guess they're happy now.