When I finally turned off the tv last night, it was 12:30 in the morning here in Washington state and, despite percentage signs and other stats flashing in red and blue inside my brain, I miraculously fell asleep. Three Senatorial races were still undecided when I finally went to bed, Washington, Colorado and Alaska, and remained so when I woke up this morning.
My biggest hope in this election was for the Republicans to win back the House – which they did in great numbers – if only to remove Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. It was a wonderful achievement in my book. When I listened to Harry Reid’s speech last night, I thought of a taxi ride I took in Las Vegas last year. The driver ranted on and on about Obama and Harry Reid and I told him, “you guys have to vote that guy out in 2010.” Well, obviously no one heeded my advice and we’ve got ol’ Harry back in the Senate. One out of two ain’t bad.
Losing the Senate is probably a blessing in disguise in light of 2012, but I’ll leave the potential advantages of a split Congress to the political analysts, something I’m not. I did, however, learn a lot about the importance of the Republican gubernatorial wins particularly in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Good job, John Kasich!
I’m sorry to see Christine O’Donnell didn’t win. I previously wrote about Ms. O’Donnell and got some flack from readers regarding my concerns about her nomination. I thought she couldn’t win. I’m with Bernie on this one. I’d rather have someone who would vote my way half of the time rather than someone who’d never vote my way. It’s great to be an ideological purist, but, sometimes, you have to be practical. I must say that listening to acceptance speeches by Tea Party-backed candidates, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, was a breath of fresh air.
I would’ve loved to have seen Barbara Boxer lose and Meg Whitman win in California, but you can’t have everything. God only knows what Jerry Brown is going to do in California. He was blabbering during his acceptance speech last night but perhaps it was way past his bedtime. I sure hope he gets some rest because he’s going to need it when he starts to tackle the massive problems in that state. But, hey, I don’t live there anymore.
To be fair and balanced, I did switch tv coverage from Fox News to MSNBC and someone would’ve thought they were watching election returns in a foreign country. Their coverage – if you could call it that – was laughable. When I did muster up the strength to actually watch Keith Olbermann and his three cohorts, their attempt to minimize the Republican take over of the House was pathetic. I could vaguely make out the outline of the black armbands under their jackets while they sat around like a clique of silly school girls bad-mouthing those that weren’t part of their elite group. They had no one with opposing views, unlike Fox News which had several pundits on the right and left throughout the night. Instead, Olbermann sat around with three other like-minded individuals enjoying their Republican bashing and Chris Matthews even threw in one of his sophomoric comments about Sarah Palin. Did someone forget to tell me that Ms. Palin was running for office? These bozos must be obsessed and afraid of this woman otherwise why bother?
We’re still waiting to hear whether Patty Murray lost her Senate seat to Dino Rossi here in Washington. Knowing how liberals rule in Seattle, I’m not holding my breath. I’d just love to see the woman who once said, “[Osama bin Laden]’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. He’s made their lives better,” have to look for a real job like the other 10% of Americans.
Over the past several weeks, President Obama drove his analogy of the car into the ground. The Dems were in the front seat and the Republicans, who ran the car into a ditch, according to him, didn’t get to drive anymore and were relegated to the back seat. Well, it doesn’t matter who was sitting in the front seat or the back seat, because, last night, the American people applied the brakes!
When I watched the President speak this morning, he looked as if he would’ve preferred to have a root canal without any anesthetic rather than stand in front of those cameras. He’s now calling for cooperation and bipartisanship, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I still remember the closed door sessions during the Obamacare fiasco when “transparency” was promised. Whether he’ll be able to tolerate being in the same room with John Boehner is something we’ll have to wait and see.
As Mick Jagger said, “you can’t always get what you want, but … you get what you need.” Well, we needed to stop Obama’s far left agenda to transform this country into something unrecognizable and that’s exactly what we got last night. Let’s hope the Republicans will do actually what they said during the campaign, otherwise, like the Dems found out last night, the electorate will boot them out in two years.
Overall, it was a very good night. Countdown clock on my computer to Election Day 2012: 2 years, 0 months, 3 days, 3 hours……… Let the games begin!
