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I blame the one issue folks on this. They are so hung up on abortion, they would rather sit at home and not vote than vote for a Republican candidate. That attitude gave us Hillary instead of Lazio.

You may have point. May be.

Aside from Jefford's switch-a-roo-ski, I look at Ashcroft's unwillingness to play hardball down in Missouri, as a big reason why Republicans don't control the Senate today. Think about it. Carnahan was dead! He was elected, not his wife.

There are other reasons too.

There are other reasons too.

I don't doubt it for a moment. Republicans can be their own worst enemy.
Still in my book, not voting then complaining about the outcome has got to be pretty dumb. No candidate is perfect. But just imagine if we had Lazio today .. we'd also have Pickering, too ...

I look at Ashcroft's unwillingness to play hardball down in Missouri, as a big reason why Republicans don't control the Senate today. Think about it. Carnahan was dead! He was elected, not his wife.

There's nothing he could have done, campaign-wise. It's obvious that Missouri voters in general vote with emotions and sympathy rather than brains. If Ashcroft had continued a strong campaign after Carnahan died, they would have thought Ashcroft the biggest jerk on the planet, and he would have lost by a far larger margin than he did. It's also nowhere near certain that he would have won any post-election legal challenge.

Besides, when it's a single-seat margin you're talking about, everything ANYONE did way back when can be labelled as "the reason why we don't control the Senate today." It makes it too easy to sit around and blame everyone under the sun. We should just forget about the past and look towards November on this.

We all must come to the realization that no amount of pressure from the President would have changed a thing. One thing is certain, though. The battle lines have been clearly drawn and it GW and the Pubbies who have the ammo. But what to do? I see a vote on CFR getting pushed closer to the recess. If they pass it with less than ten days before the recess, pocket veto. Tit for tat. The Democrats also set the stage for recess appointments. Bush can point to Chuckie's statements as proof that the Dems are more interested in politics than national security, the rule of law, etc, etc. Battles vs wars. Dems may have won this battle, but the war is turning against them.

Complain about Jim "swithceroo" Jeffords, John "I lost to a rotting corpse" Ashcroft, and Rick "I lost to a carpetbagger" Lazio all you want.

There is only one person TRULY to blame for the dems controlling the Senate: Mitch McConnell.

As chairman of the RSC from 1997-2000, he SINGLEHANDEDLY took a 55-45 Republican majority and gave it to the Dems. If ou remember, all the talk in 1998 was about the Reps getting a filibuster-proof majority- they broke even. He refused to help Linda Smith in her bid against Patty Murray- all because of her stance on campaign finance. Schumer had no business beating D'Amato. In 2000, Reps lost WAY too many seats than they should have. All this falls on McConnell's shoulders, and he's the one that needs to be held accountable.