"We never had a veto-proof majority"
Sixty votes could have been found. I don't say it would have been easy, but I do know they could have been found. But many of the problems of the last Congress don't seem to have had the usual "gridlock-R-vs-D" quality to them, and instead seem to have other motivations: like positioning oneself for presidential bid (Frist with refusing the Nuclear Option , McCain with the Gang of 14 nonsense, both sacrificing porinciple for the sake of presenting themselves at a future date as "a moderate"). Or writing border fences into legislation, but refusing to fund them (i.e. Don;t worry businessman who bought and sold me, you can hire all the illegal aliens you want, I only voted for it to give me cover with the peasants). When they weren't being dishonest, they were pandering; throwing bones to "the Base" (i.e. Right-to-Lifers and religious bigots) -- such as the Terri Schiavo farce, the Faith-Based Initiattive, dangling "Strict Constitutionalists" before the Anti-abortion crowd -- without having to actually accomplish anything: Terri's still dead (and I'll bet Mr. Hastert and Frist can adequately explain how stomping all over Marital Rights in the process was somehow a conservative principle, right? And then to make the claim of "Defending Marriage" out of the other side of your face? Why, that's just too rich...), Bush stopped funding Faith-Based a long time ago, and how's that Court thing working out so far?.
It's hard enough to hold together a 55-member caucus, but keeping all of ours and trying to get 5 of theirs is a substantially tall order, especially in an election year. Frist, my Senator, did well as long as he was a backbencher, but was the worst GOP leader in the past half-century. I'm grateful he is sparing us the spectacle of running for President after his mediocre leadership.
As for some of your other debatable points, I'm not sure many should be rehashed here (Schiavo). At least their hearts were in the right place on the issue. After all, the Conservative stance on marital rights doesn't extend to murdering your spouse so you can marry your whore, even if the spouse is a vegetable.