It wasn't the Republican voters who deep-sixed the GOP in the elections, it was the independents who defected to the Democrats in large numbers.
Lot of people went to the polls but didn't vote for senate or house races.
True but there were registered Repubs that voted dem.
We voted straight repub even tho I lean more libertarian. My husband voted straight repub and it was his first time.. became a citizen in March '06.
Sure lots of independents aka "I'll vote what's good for me and to heck with everyone else" -- voted Dem.
But lots of conservatives stayed home too - depresed by so many charges of corruption...and the perception that Republicans were disloyal to the base.
Actually, Drudge had posted some numbers on how many Dims vs. Republicans voted for senators, and there were 50% more Dim votes cast than Republican ones. I believe the numbers were 300-some million D, 200-some-million R's. So had the Pubbies come out and voted, as close as it was with that many fewer of us now, we would have taken an even bigger chunk of everything than we already had.
BTW, I was one of the ones who braved the pouring rain to push straight R buttons, and encourage many others to do the same. :-(
I'm pretty sure a large number of conservatives abstained or defected too with the intent of gridlocking government for the next two years so we don't get two more years of status-quo (which has basically been the anti-contract-with-America, and with the revocation of habius corpus which managed to survive over 200 years of various wars and conflicts, and the wholesale spying on the domestic phone/internet systems -- anti-America).
With a veto in the white-house and zero chance of the split house/senate being able to over-ride that veto the only thing I'm truly worried about is that the President has the same open border philosophy as the democrats which means precious little is going to stem the flood of illegal immigration save maybe changing the name from illegal to legal (sigh). But with the CINO (conservatives in name only) being bought off by big business for the never ending stream of sweatshop wage labor, even a republican victory wouldn't have changed anything there either.
Personally I see the next two years in the wilderness as a good thing. The government will be mostly paralyzed, and in two years when we return the republicans to power and someone wants to build a budget-busting bridge to nowhere they may actually remember who their real bosses are (hint -- not the lobbyist or the NSA).
I tend to agree. Just because there was a tiny "punish the GOP" contingent on FR, doesn't mean that the conservative base didn't show up.
I don't know any conservatives who stayed home.
If GOP numbers were down, it might just as well be anti-war RINO's who stayed home or voted Dem.
In other words, there are a lot of recriminations being hurled at "unappeasable, single-issue, conservative purists" ... but I haven't seen a lot of evidence that they are to blame.