Colonel_Reb
Hall of Famer
I figured I'd start a thread for the venting after the elections are over. Will we get more of the same hypocrisy and spinelessness from the GOP, or a new, more virulent strain of liberalism from the Jack-asses?
Colonel_Reb said:I see former Tennessee Vol and Redskin Heath Shuler has won a house seat as a "conservative" Democrat in North Carolina.
I agree. Go deadlock! Go deadlock!Triad said:Our government can do less harm if the power is split.
sport historian said:Webb is now 1800 votes ahead of Allen. Depending on Missouri, the Democrats may well have both houses. I believe Bush actually wanted this, so as to ram through amnesty.
Yesterday Republicans paid a heavy price for their failure over the last few years to live up to the principles and standards that the American people believed they represented when they took the House of Representatives from the Democrats a decade ago.
This year's election turned out to be just what many in the GOP leadership and those of us outside Congress had feared: a referendum on the performance of Republicans in the White House and the Congress rather than a contest between competing ideological visions.
Indeed, this may have been the least ideological election in modern memory with voters rejecting Republicans across the board not because they rejected where Republicans want to take the country so much as their performance in taking us their.
In recent years we have seen Republicans who have spent a lifetime professing a belief in a smaller, limited national government band together to spend more money on Washington solutions to state and local problems than their Democratic predecessors.
We have watched Republicans elected by promising the highest standards in terms of integrity come to Washington to do good and stay to do well ... for themselves, their families and their friends and demean the offices to which they were elected in the process.
We have witnessed the hypocrisy of Republican leaders who came to Washington swearing an allegiance to upholding traditional values work to protect those among their number who have flaunted those values, morals and standards.
We have stood by as Republicans have flaunted, twisted and ignored rules to achieve their own partisan rather than principled ends; leaders who have used earmarks to seduce reluctant members to vote for legislation they knew was wrong and kept votes open for hours while they and their White House allies bludgeoned their colleagues into line in support of such legislation.
With yesterday's results in it is time for conservatives, Republicans and those who made them pay for their performance to demand better.
First, House Republicans should heed the advice of Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor who has called for postponing the leadership elections now scheduled to take place on November 15th, but two days after Congress returns.
Those who survived yesterday haven't even had a chance to discuss what happened let alone chart out a strategy for the next Congress. They should do so before electing new leaders and they should reject those who would simply rubberstamp the leadership that contributed to the defeat of so many of their colleagues last night.
It is our hope that the new leadership that emerges will be made up of principled conservatives who will work with the White House when the President is right and even with the new Democratic Congressional leadership when good ideas come from that quarter.
They should remember that many of those Democrats who were elected yesterday ran as moderate conservatives in districts that are traditionally conservative. Democratic candidates didn't articulate much in the way of a concrete agenda, but they did make promises to those whose votes they sought. Many of them promised they won't raise our taxes, demanded fiscal responsibility and attacked their GOP opponents for their participation in the spending binge that has characterized Washington in recent years. Many also disclaimed any intention of abridging traditional second amendment rights and declared themselves pro-life.
If these candidates were sincere ... and we have to believe that they were ... Republicans should be able to work with them on substantive issues where there is agreement ... and they should be prepared to do so.
At the same time, Republicans should go back to the principled stands that made America's voters proud to vote for them; that brought millions of traditionally Democratic voters into the Republican fold ... voters who deserted them yesterday simply because they believed they'd been had.
Nancy Pelosi has said that she wants to reform the way Congress does business and has in the past supported many of the same reforms that have been suggested by the Republican Study Committee and other Conservative members.
In fact, she and 162 of her colleagues signed on to a package of procedural reforms before the election that included earmark reform, limits on the leadership's power through the Rules Committee to alter legislation before it reaches the floor, a requirement that members actually have a day to read the legislation on which they are being asked to vote before the vote is called and a limit on the amount of time a vote can be kept open.
These are needed reforms and if she and her colleagues were serious when they endorsed them, they should enact them as their first order of business in the next Congress.
Most conservatives in and out of Congress think of themselves as conservatives first and Republicans second, but most of us are Republicans because we believe most Republicans share the principles and values we wish to see reflected in public policy.
At the same time, however, we are and have always been willing to cross party and ideological lines to accomplish those goals and continue to be willing to do so.
We hope that the party in which most of us have invested our trust will learn the right lessons from what happened yesterday and work to redeem that trust lest it be lost forever.
Jews take root in Capitol Hill
Democrats may have conquered both houses of Congress, and so have Jewish politicians. Number of Jewish senators rises from 11 t o13 and number of Jewish representatives jumps to 30 thanks to six new faces creating all-time high of Jewish politicians in Congress. Another precedent: First Muslim elected to House.
Bart said:To demonstrate the extent of Pelosi's support for Israel and for the Jewish community, Jewish activists in the Bay area tell the story of a luncheon given several years ago by pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at which Pelosi was one of the speakers. Suddenly an alarm went off in the building and the participants began rushing to the doors. All but one  Pelosi, who stood up and recited Israel's national anthem. The impression that this event left on the Jewish activists who were gathered in the room is now one of Pelosi's main assets as she tries to improve her image in pro-Israel circles.