I am convinced that if it hadn't been for alternative media -- the Internet, talk radio, and the one that seem to be forgotten, direct mail -- we'd now be complaining about President Gore's lame and inadequate response to 9/11.
That election was sooooooooo close. If any one of a half-dozen things hadn't gone our way, we would have lost. The Freepers and the Dittoheads helped make a difference.
Thanks Jim.
The future looks bright. We've developed the professionals, the techniques and the audiences in alternative media, while the Left was clinging to the traditional media that served them so well for so long. It will be their undoing.
Go to TownHall.com and read this author's (Ben Shapiro) biography (at the end of the article). Very interesting IMO.
BUMP TO FREEREPUBLIC.COM
Republicans win control of U.S. Senate
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (November 6, 2002 03:51 PM EST) - Republicans recaptured control of the Senate, savoring a history-making victory that could help President Bush's plans for tax cuts and homeland security and spur quicker action on judicial vacancies.
The GOP on Tuesday ousted a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran in Georgia and an incumbent appointed to fill her husband's seat in Missouri, while ending the comeback attempt of former Vice President Walter Mondale in Minnesota.
Republicans were assured of 51 seats in the 100-member Senate. The only race left undecided was Louisiana, where Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu faces a Dec. 7 runoff.
In South Dakota, Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson barely held on to his seat, narrowly defeating Republican Rep. John Thune in a victory that became a proxy battle between Bush and outgoing Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. Johnson won by a mere 527 votes out of more than 334,000 cast, with all precincts reporting.
Coupled with the GOP's equally satisfying but less surprising retention of its House majority, the Democrats' only snippet of power will be the ability to force procedural delays in the Senate.
Mondale, who had less than a week to campaign after the death of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone in a plane crash, lost narrowly to former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman.
The election also brought familiar names to the Senate: Republican Elizabeth Dole, the former secretary of transportation who won in North Carolina; Democrat Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, drafted by his party after Sen. Robert Torricelli quit his re-election race due to ethical problems and former U.S. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander in Tennessee.
Lautenberg, appearing on NBC's "Today" Show, said he was shocked at how poorly the Democrats fared.
"And I can't understand why because I truly believe that the agenda that we have is more appropriate for the citizens across the country," said Lautenberg, who promised to serve the entire six years of his term.
The results reversed a two-decade trend of the party holding the White House losing Senate seats in midterm elections, and saw GOP victories in at least five of nine states Bush visited in the campaign's closing days.
Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who will soon resume his post as majority leader, told CBS's "The Early Show" that the results exceeded his expectations "just because it did become so widespread, not only keeping the House but taking back the Senate by at least a couple of seats."
Lott said Republicans "have a lot of agenda left," including boosting homeland security, improving the economy and working on energy, retirement and prescription drug policies.
"It will feel good to be on offense here," he said.
Daschle, who shouldered partial blame for the loss, said the war on terrorism and uncertainty surrounding Iraq drowned out the message Democrats were trying to relay about the shaky economy. But he said Democrats would not cower from the new Senate leaders.
"There are times when Republicans have been written off because they've taken such a beating in the polls only to come back from the ashes and grow stronger and there's no doubt in my mind that's exactly what's going to happen here," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We're not going away."
Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss ousted Sen. Max Cleland in Georgia, after hammering at the incumbent's opposition to Bush's Department of Homeland Security bill and overcoming Cleland's background as a triple-amputee from the Vietnam War.
"It was a hard fought battle and it was one where we carried a message of a senator who simply was voting in a way that was out of touch with a way a majority of Georgians think and our message resonated with the people," Chambliss said Wednesday morning on CBS's "The Early Show."
The GOP continued its winning ways in Missouri, where former Republican Rep. Jim Talent turned back a bid by Democratic incumbent Jean Carnahan to serve out the remaining four years of her term. She had been appointed to the seat after her husband, Mel Carnahan, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the 2000 election but still elected.
The lone Democratic pickup was in Arkansas, where state Attorney General Mark Pryor won the seat once held by his father, David Pryor. The loser was incumbent Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson.
Republicans also won a number of other races that were considered tossups.
Rep. John Sununu was victorious in New Hampshire, defeating Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for a seat held by a conservative Republican, Bob Smith. The incumbent was defeated in the primary by Sununu, whose father, John, was the state's governor and chief of staff for former President George Bush.
In Colorado, incumbent Republican Sen. Wayne Allard held off lobbyist and former U.S. Attorney Tom Stickland in a rematch of their race six years ago.
Democrats sustained a partial setback in Louisiana, where Landrieu was forced into the runoff when she failed to get the 50 percent required under state law. Her opponent will be Republican State Elections Commissioner Suzanne Terrell, who finished second in the nine-candidate race Tuesday.
With their slender margin of control, Senate Republicans will command committees and decide which bills the chamber will debate. Bush's proposals for tax cuts, economic stimulus, defense and domestic spending, national security and judicial nominations would dominate the chamber's agenda - and put Democrats in a defensive role.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who led her party's Senate election drive, said Democrats failed to hone a sharp message on issues like education and jobs.
"The country is still divided, but there were a lot of people on the left who didn't hear what they needed to hear in this election and might have stayed home," she said in an interview.
In Texas, Republican Attorney General John Cornyn won the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Phil Gramm, denying a bid by former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to become the state's first black U.S. senator.
Virginia's John Warner, a Republican power on the Senate Armed Services Committee, won his fifth six-year term, and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, expected to be the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, won his fourth term.
Other victorious Republicans included Larry Craig of Idaho, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Susan Collins of Maine, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Michael Enzi of Wyoming.
http://newslink.nandomedia.com/NandoTimes/politics/election/senate/story/608942p-4701707c.html