After the election

Well, 40% of the people have spoken, and now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be running Congress. Not the outcome I was hoping for, really. It's not that I think all that highly of the GOP (newest practitioners of the circular firing squad strategy), it's just that the Dems managed to take power running on a vague, pretty much undefined platform that seems to reduce to:

• Raising taxes.
• Spending even more money than the GOP.
  
• "Redeploying" the troops out of Iraq.
• Not being George Bush.
• Not being corrupt like the GOP.
  

At least two of those points are of rather dubious pedigree - when your party has guys in it who keep $90,000 bribes in their freezers, plus the new Speaker planning to appoint an impeached federal judge as head of the House Intelligence Committee (?!), it gets hard to legitimately claim the GOP is the only corrupt party in Washington. I also would like to know how abandoning Iraq does not give the bad guys (remember the Islamofascists?) a big victory.

The thing that frosts me even more is how these folks have been rewarded with power after six years of throwing an extended temper tantrum over their election losses in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats have spent that time making things personal. How often did we hear from them how: The GOP cheated, Bush is a criminal, Bush is stupid, Bush is not the President, BushHitler, Bush and Cheney are evil, Karl Rove is the devil, etc. . People who disagreed with the liberals in Democratic party were not merely wrong, they were evil (ask Joe Lieberman how it feels). The Democrats tossed aside all pretense of civility while pursuing an obstructive, scorched-earth policy in Congress. To me, this made them a party unfit to govern. Unfortunately, they are going to have the chance.

But now that they've got power, the Democrats have to give up the carping from the sidelines and actually propose solutions for a change. I expect they'll find it's much easier to bitch than create constructive solutions they will be held accountable for. Maybe they'll even learn some manners. (and exile the Kos Kids to Siberia, but that's too much to hope for - ed.)

As for the GOP, here's my unwanted advice for them. In my view, the GOP lost because they forgot what got them elected in 1994. Smaller, less intrusive, more efficient and honest government, remember that? I hope the GOP's new leadership takes that vision to heart before 2008.

One other thing. Don't give in to the temptation to personally attack the other side. Leave that crap to the Democrats. Don't be saying stuff like this ( a comment I culled from an unnamed righty blog about Nancy Pelosi:

…Pelosi…the greatest thing since Patton and Napoleon and that other general-guy…I quiver to see her in Kevlar!

…wait…isn’t that Kevlar that she has injected in her face?

I think the botox is getting into her synapses.

Soon she will not be allowed to give interviews to anyone other than Larry King.

Work on solutions to our problems that don't compromise conservative and GOP principles, then be ready to sell them if the Dems screw up. The one monopoly the Democrats can have is the one on hate speech.