Aside from gunning down the other side to establish a majority to pass legislation, what are they going to do? And really, with the President having nothing but bad ideas since he got into office, all America really wants is a stopgap so we can survive until his replacement is found.

Kimyl, If you read the article before posting, you would have found a question that maybe you can answer - given your comment about "nothing but bad ideas since he got into office"

The question: Name 2 to 4 specific pieces of Republican-spearheaded legislation passed in the 109th Congress that have angered voters in marginal congressional districts.

Our message board community here awaits your reply...

Well, the problem with this group is not what they have done, it is what they have not done.

They failed to pass:
1.meaningful and effective changes to SS
2.immigration reform
3.a ban on gay marriage
4.an increase in the minimum wage

What they did pass:
1.bankruptcy "reform" (not a real advertising gem)
2.medicare part D (a big entitlement that frustrated millions of seniors)
3.meaningless resolutions
4.a ban on late term abortions that was already overturned by the court
5.tax cuts aimed at the very wealthy

Not exactly a populist agenda, and nothing that really makes the right wing fundamentalists happy, except maybe some activist judges and an increase in fines for indecency. I don't know what happens in the next 4 months, but the do-nothing congress has not impressed most Americans.

They "do do" something.

The other thing, of course, is that this congress has let the executive grab more power than ever before, including the President having the right to ignore any law he wants, and to operate outside the laws (FISA) passed by the congress.

Maybe giving power to the other party will put a check on the executive branch, another wildly unpopular branch. It will boil down to campaigning and local politics, but the starting point for Republicans is not favorable.

Um...so you are saying that the Democrats will win by campaigning for banning gay marriage and reforming illegal immigration, while also increasing the minimum wage?

THAT is the ticket to victory for the average Democrat?

No, I am saying the confluence of what they did leaves Republicans dissatisfied and Democrats angered.

Right now Americans trust Democrats on all the issues that matter, and if that holds true through fall, that is how they will vote. Democrats will run on their Change of Direction agenda, but the work the Republicans did not do will work doubly well for them.

Kimyl,

I would really like to know how many Republicans who actively vote and are involved in politics are dissatisfied and thus will not vote (or will vote Dem) due to those issues you mentioned.

For every one you find, I will find you two Democrats who can't agree on the major issues of the day - like Iraq withdrawl, socialized medicine, tax hikes to cut the deficit etc.

The reality is that Republicans understand the makeup of the Senate - and are THRILLED that some McCain-Kennedy abomination is not going to see the light of day. We also understand that a gay marriage ban as a Constitutional amendment was not even remotely going to happen - but we sure enjoy watching your party take a stand on the issue. What is your party's stand anyway?

The Democrats were angry in 2004 too - what did that get you. A loss of 4 Senate seats, a loss of about 8 House seats and 4 more years of Bush.

Keep it up.

Regardless of political outcomes, past or present, the Republican majority is made up of fundamentalist Christians, fiscal conservatives, moderate conservatives and conservative libertarians. It is not sustainable, because they cannot satisfy all of them, anymore than the Democrats could hold together pro-choice voters, environmental voters, labor, moderates, socially liberal conservatives, etc.

What is Bush's administration and this congress standing for anyway? They don't have a big direction and they are losing their way. When people get tired of it they will listen to what the Democrats have to say and give it a try. It is already happening in the mountain west and in public polling.

Any coalition is fragile, and especially when you have a group who stands for nothing but staying in power, they are bound to fade eventually in a free democracy.

Son, you really should consider the beauty of the unspoken thought, as James Carville once said to Howard Dean.

Talk about "fractious" or "fragile" coalitions today? Think about the FDR coalition of big labor, southern segregationists, liberals, and blacks. It held together for over 30 years.

While public approval of Congress is low, congressional Democrats fare little better than Republicans, and more importantly, when the question is "do you approve of YOUR OWN congressman?" the rate jumps to 59%.

I've been hearing this nonsense about people "turning to the Democrats" ever since the GOP first took Congress in 1994. The Senate has been a close battle back and forth, but nothing has shown any real results from Democrats over time, just as CAL-50 illustrated recently.

You can't beat something with nothing, and the Democrats offer nothing beyond the failed policies of the past and the socialist nostrums of their leftist fantasies.

But, thanks for playing, and please accept the lovely assortment of parting gifts we have for you as consolation. Better luck next time!

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I would like to thank you and other Republicans for bankrupting our country, committing us to a stupid, fruitless war, and pushing to limit our rights just as the terrorists wanted us to do. I know you would rather win than see our country succeed, so keep at it. Maybe in your fascist fantasies, all the lazy will die off, and you can sit around in your perfect world, free markets reigning like they did in the 1800's, women back in the home raising kids, and all of your other fantasies of a world long lost to moral decay and big government.

Having majorities on your side will never make you more right, and the more your power is concentrated and people see how narrow-minded, backward looking and hurtful neoconservative and arch-conservative policy is, they will wake up. They will look for progress again, and progressives will be there with new ideas aside from greed, the laffer curve, hard work for nothing, limited rights, legislated morality and all of the right wing pipe dreams that have yet to pan out. Where are the new GOP ideas?

Wow Kimyl oh - I thought you were a rational debater, but this last post demonstrates the irrational nature of most liberals I encounter. Most Republicans are middle class. Ben Stein wrote a wonderful definition and I shall quote:

The real Republicans are the hardware store owners in Little Rock, the factory workers in Kentucky who believe in life, the retired aerospace workers in Palm Desert who are concerned about the moral decay of the culture. The wearers of cloth coats. Those are Republicans, to me. The Republican Party is not really about ending the inheritance tax for billionaires. The real Republicans don't even know billionaires. (Most billionaires are Democrats, anyway.) The real Republicans are not about Iraq or the ABM. They are about loving their neighbors and wanting to pass on the same great America they knew as children to their grandchildren.

Real Republicans are not haters. Not ever. It's just not in them to hate, just as it's not in any real American to hate any other American who lives within the law.

You are sadly confused (living in an insulated collegetown perhaps?) if you think that mainstream Republicans identify with the rich. And why is it that the most vocal and noticeable Democrats are multi-millionaires like Arianna Huffington, John Kerry and his heiress wife and assorted movie stars?

The point of the article DJ quoted is that most Americans will not choose nothing over something. Democrats have not offered a clear alternative in this voting cycle, aside from investigations into the administration. Minimum wage hikes (the only people I know making minimum wage are first job teenagers who aren't old enough to vote), a dream of health care for all (no plan just a dream) which Americans don't want (see 1993), college tuition assistance which almost all Americans are getting in some form (even wealthy professors I know who feel guilty that their children qualify), and, um, what else was there?

I would think that the elections since 9/11 would have sent home the message to Democrats that regular middle class Americans (those who don't live in gated communities or idealized collegetowns) care most about national security. The emphasis on border security, which Democrats have opposed in every way making it essential in most Republicans' eyes that we increase our majorities in hte house and senate, is another piece of the national security puzzle.

Wake up for heaven's sake - we need a real party on the other side of the aisle with real ideas! Americans are done with the recycled ideas of the 20th century and that is all Democrats are offering. You need innovative thinkers recognizing that the make-up of this country is more conservative than perhaps you would like, but it is the majority and policy that holds with Democrat ideals will have to balance that reality. It calls for thinking outside the box. I know it's tough, Republicans are good at it because most Republicans tend to be problem solvers in their work (show me a business person who is not a problem solver hourly) and entrepreneurs in their livelihood. I know very few business owners who are Democrats, though living in a collegetown I do know some. Overwhelmingly, the Democrats who talk like you are affiliated with the universities and have complete job security or are unionized teachers or are young employees of big organizations and spout the rhetoric with no real world sense of how it impacts the businesses that actually employ Americans. Which are you?

One more to share with you, from the American Spectator blog:

Got this on one of my email lists. A definitive description of Canadian health care:

Two patients limp into two different medical clinics with the same complaint. Both have trouble walking and appear to require a hip replacement. The first patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week.

The second sees his family doctor after waiting a week for an appointment, then waits eight weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn't reviewed for another month and finally has his surgery scheduled six months from then.

Why the different treatment for the two patients?

The first is a Golden Retriever.

The second is a human.

Yup, that's the kind of health care system I want. I love my dogs, but do I want them to receive better health care than me? I think not.

I live in a suburb of a northern post-industrial city, and i am in school to become a physician.

As for your little anecdote about Canadian health care, here is my story: I tear my ACL, so my knee is swollen and when I try to pivot I have pain and weakness. I call to see my PCP and the wait is 2 months. Then I get to see a specialist a month later. Then a month later I see the surgeon to schedule seurgery for 4 months out. I have insurance that costs me and my employer 200 dollars a month for a healthy young male with no conditions; this is not Medicaid or something.
And as for Americans rejecting socialized medicine, they did not reject it as much as the congress failed to act on it. Depending on what word you use to describe it, people support it. Health care costs are the number one concern of Americans, and the Republican plan is tailored to the young and the rich, the people who need help the least. Middle class people will eventually get tired of the personal responsibility line when they have a combined income of 65,000 and they cannot afford health insurance, and the dearth of GOP solutions beyond "the market" will become clear.

The idea that Republicans are not haters may be true, but a number of right wing pundits, preachers and politicians spew all sorts of hate and contempt for people, ideas, political parties, professors, etc.

It seems to me that more than anything your dislike of progressive politics and liberalism comes from seeing it in its most myopic form, at a college campus. These kids are idealistic and just beginning to be informed about injustice, what really happens in the world and our country. Sure professors can be insulated, and some are liberal as a result of reading too much and experiencing too little, but the indoctrination that is hated and cursed and challenged is nothing compared to the conservative indoctrination they get when they go to work for cut-throat, ambitious conservatives in business.

My last post was a little irrational but I grow tired of hearing the GOP talk about how the Democrats want to recycle ideas when their ideas of freedom and equality seem drawn from the 19th century and ignores all progress since then. I also have a tendency to get pissed off when people use flippant language implying that I am some kind of a retard wandering in from the fringes of the communist movement or some damn thing. I went to school, I have worked, I read voraciously, and I always want to have any belief I have challenged so that I can have a fully developed belief system and not fall into some lockstep dogmatic coma where I stamp D or R on a ballot every 4 years until I die.

If you don't want to be treated like a "fringe fanatic" here, then I suggest you stop with the mass generalizations that you make about Republicans. We are not all rich. Some of us are more socially liberal or accepting than others. The umbrella is very very big in the GOP, which is why I strayed over after a youth of defending liberal ideas, which always seemed to excuse people from taking personal responsibility. The sheer arrogance of the liberals on websites and at the universities shocks me to the core. Talk about bigotry.

I don't know why you suffered so at the hands of the evil health insurers. I have never heard of anyone made to wait for care when in extreme discomfort and I deal with our employees' health insurance issues ALL the time. PCP? Isn't that the planned health care which is sort of like an HMO? Cheap, but not very effective? This is why we pay for health insurance that allows us to select our health care providers - free market, remember? You think the Canadian system would be better? That's why my Canadian friends come down here for care.... living in upstate NY, we have Canadians traveling down here all the time for services.

Yes, I am disgusted with the college liberals (professors - not students) I come into contact with. They have no idea what it is to make payroll, pay for disability insurance, workers' comp, health insurance, be responsible for others. They have no clue about who actually pays federal taxes in this country - something like the top 50% wage earners pay 95% of all federal taxes already, yet they should be taxed more? Please.

The number of left-wing "pundits, preachers and politicians" spewing all sorts of hate and contempt for people, ideas, political parties, professors, etc. is equal to the number on the right. You would be naive to claim otherwise. The rhetoric is bitter and angry. Living where I do, I have been called an idiot numerous times at dinners and parties for supporting the president, it is an unfortunate tendency of educated liberals to assume that they are all-knowing about what is good for me, my family and the country. Other ideas are irrelevant. I have visited and commented on lefty sites - the attacks are unbelievable and appalling.

Good for you being a reader and a thinker. Perhaps you will always stand firm in the beliefs you hold now. Perhaps, like many of us, your opinions will change as the times evolve and you marry and have children... or don't. Twenty years ago I laughed at my father when he spouted that saying, "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no mind." Funny how things change.

I always want to be a liberal only because I think that social justice, equality, freedom and progress are wonderful, and I know that as you get older change seems more foreign, worthless, scary, whatever it is. I think progress is great, and I know that most 40 year olds with some semblance of success will resist change, will be opposed to new ideas that seem baseless or useless, but I hope to fail that test of mind and continue to believe in humanity. Naive, sure, but I'm not crazy.

And I am not trying to attack individual Republicans, because I know that many of them are good people. I am an atheist, but I have respect for the fact that religion is an awesome force for people--hell, I have my own little superstitions and such that make me a better person. My attack on Republicans is only against what I see as failed logic, empty rhetoric and bad elected figures who are not pursuing a coherent conservative strategy. As a Democrat, I hate those failing in my own party, and I want them to change. I have core principles and when Democrats cower to special interests, or hold themselves above the law, or otherwise besmirch my ideals or my country, I let them know.

Anyway, I appreciate the civility. I'm sure I'll become more conservative as I get older, but I hope I don't grow tired