Sunday, December 07, 2008

The first indication of what 2012 is going to be like?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In a year when national Republican fortunes took a turn for the worse, Louisiana delivered the GOP two seats in Congress in elections delayed by Hurricane Gustav.

Indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was ousted Saturday from his New Orleans area district, while Republicans narrowly held on to the seat vacated by a retiring incumbent.

The wins followed Republicans' reconquest of another House seat earlier this fall that had been lost to Democrats.

In the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of New Orleans, Republican attorney Anh "Joseph" Cao won 50 percent of the vote to Jefferson's 47 percent and will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. His only previous political experience was an unsuccessful 2007 bid for a seat in the state legislature.

We may be seeing a trend here. Yes the Democrats made significant gains in both houses of congress and won the presidency but in the runoff election in Georgia Saxby Chambliss beat his Democrat opponent in a landslide (and Chambliss and most observers credit Sarah Palin's crossing the state campaigning for him with a large share of the credit for the victory). Now in Louisiana the GOP holds a vulnerable seat and topples a Democrat from what should have been a safe seat (yes, I know Jefferson was under indictment but that shouldn't have mattered in New Orleans).

The public may be experiencing a bit of buyers remorse over handing the keys to the nation over to the jackass party. Especially since the little messiah (Mr. "Hope and Change" - you cant fix the problem by playing musical chairs and shuffling the same people into different offices) is shaping his administration into a third Clinton term by populating the most important posts with Clinton era retreads.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that our new president is simply going to preen for the television cameras while the nation is actually run by the same people who would have run it if Hillary had won the election.

AND people are waking up to the fact that the congress which they gave a single digit job approval number was controlled by DEMOCRATS (a majority of the voting public thought that the Republicans were in control of both houses of congress before the election) and that they just gave them a BIGGER majority!

Last month's election was a public reaction to years of the most dishonestly negative press coverage the nation has ever seen directed against the war in Iraq and President Bush in general. The electorate is beginning to realize that in politics a temper tantrum can have a very high cost.