Well, after 12 years of controlling both houses of congress, the GOP has lost the House and the Senate is too close to call and may be for quite some time depending on what happens in Missouri, Virginia, and Montana.

As most of my friends know, I’m quite the conservative Republican; and while I continued to vote that way for the Senate and House races in my district; I feel that the GOP has really let me down in many ways.  Most, if not all, of the ideals that took the GOP to the top starting in 1994 have all been lost in general Washington politics.  Fiscal responsibility is something that seems to be forgotten (and that is spending outside of Military spending, which I am 100% for).

Also, at least since Bush has been in office, the leadership of both the House and the Senate haven’t been leading at all.  Even with the President, it was their requirement and duty to lead with the conservative principles that got them (and continued to get them) elected in the first place.  That has been missing the last 6 years.

If we end up with a Democratic House; slightly Republican (or tied) Senate, things could get interesting as split party congres like that will make things difficult.  However, regardless of what happens in the Senate, the Democrates (gulp!) have a mandate and the public has given them the opportunity to try to lead and get things done.  I don’t see that happening and while Nancy Pelosi Speaker to be has stated that the House won’t spend a lot of their time investigating or trying to impeach Bush, don’t count on it.  It has been the mission of the Dems for the last 6 years to ruin Bush; not because of his policies and their disagreements for them, but rather some personal, deep-seeded hatred for him as a man.  I hope that Ms. Pelosi can keep her party in check and deliver on that promise.

The only good that I can really see out of this is when there are conflicting parties among the different branches of government, nothing tends to get done.  Most of the time nothing is better than what Congress does accomplish and while I had hopes in 2002 when Republicans had control of everything that many conservative legislation initiatives would pass, there wasn’t much; and the tax breaks that did pass still came with increased pork spending in government so no real long term benefits.

Congratulations again to the Dems; and to the Republicans; if you ever want to win back support among the voters you have to get back to a fully conservative base as right now there isn’t anywhere for us to look to right now.  The Democrats, with few exceptions, are too liberal and support too many increases in the size of government.  Some GOP members state they are for smaller government, but all recent evidence is to the contrary.

For the record, outside of the tightly contested races where I felt my vote truly counted, I voted for a third party candidate.  Generally, I would vote for the Independent American party (known as the Constitution party in most states).  This is the first time when I didn’t vote straight Republican across the board.

We need a government that understands that it isn’t the government that makes this country work; it’s the people.  It always has been and always will be.  Government, by it’s very nature, opposes the initiative, innovation, and imagination that is needed to create new ideas, products, and services to really help the people of this country.  I don’t expect much out of the next 2 years; or really just 1 before we start trying to elect our next President.

I’m sorry for all the rambling; if I took more time, I’m sure I could have posted a much more coherent and nicely flowing essay.  But hey, English was never my best subject; and I’ll admit at this moment I’m tired and sad and just don’t want to proof read my post. Hooray to all of you who actually read all the way through this.