Election Postmortem

Taking a look at the wide spread defeat of Republicans in last night's election I see two major reasons - the Republicans and the culpability of the media.

First off the Republicans have strayed far from the conservative principles embodied by the 1994 Republican Revolution that put them in power. What started as a "change" (there's that word again) to doing business as usual has ended in them trying to outdo the unfettered spending spree of the Democrats. Pork barrel spending used to be a trait associated with the Democrats repaying their campaign supporters but has evolved into meaning any politician. So the rhetorical question begging to be asked here is "What happened to the Reagan Republicans?" Well, short of saying they went over to the dark side (no pun intended) they became part of the "where's mine?" crowd and added to the problem instead of trying to solve it.

On top of that the Northeast chose what most conservatives would call a moderate to be the Republican candidate. McCain was not my first choice to be the Republican nominee, in fact not even in the top 3, but due to the skewed primary election process we didn't have a real choice in the matter.

Then we've got the media. OK, before you liberals get your panties in a wad, I'm speaking of the unprecedented advertising money as well as the brown nosed (again, no pun intended) "reporting" of the campaign events and other media denigrating.

Some say that this election was bought with money from dubious sources and while that remains unproven I do believe the election was bought. Although initially agreeing with McCain to the limits of public funding after finding out how popular their candidate was the Democrats shunned public funding. While McCain was limited to $84M in September the chosen one raised $150M that same month. When you outspend your opponent by 3 to 1 in the closing months of the election what else could you call it. As of the last reporting the O campaign has spent nearly $650M.

The second aspect of media complicity helps explain how we got to this point. Never before in history has there been such visceral reaction by the media to a President as there has been toward Bush. This toward a man that inherited an America weakened by the lax policies of his predecessor. They did there best to help the chosen one tie McCain to Bush ever chance they got. It was reported by an independent source that only 14% of stories in which McCain was a significant factor were positive, while 57% were negative and 36% of stories about Obama were positive, and only 29% have been negative. What bias?

Last but not least of the media blame goes to the Hollywood crowd together with late night talk shows, since the mindless throng look to them for guidance. They have moved from making fun of the accent or physical traits of the President to showing contempt and hatred for the man and his policies. It is one thing to make fun of a man because of the way he pronounces nuclear but entirely another matter to dismiss his administration and policies as idiotic. And isn't it odd that those doing the criticizing and calling Bush stupid could not have even been admitted to Yale or Harvard Business School.

Election Update
In Fort Bend County the unexpired term for State Senator in District 17 was filled by a Democrat but there were 2 Democrats and 4 Republicans running. Also Democrat Dora "the explorer" Olivo held onto her District 27 seat. On the brighter side, Texas did manage to reelect Republican Senator John Cornyn and help keep the Democrats from obtaining the 60 votes needed for a filibuster proof majority. In my district Democrat Congressman Nick Lampson was ousted in favor of Republican Pete Olson (who I was less than thrilled with).

I'm Just Saying - It could have been worse!