Posted on 11/09/2006 7:48:23 AM PST by SmithL
Washington -- Republicans woke Wednesday to a coast-to-coast wreckage in the midterm congressional elections that many acknowledged was of their own making.
Tuesday's political earthquake -- destroying Republican majorities that took decades to build -- slammed the door on the Bush era and opened the door to recrimination, regrouping and a rethinking of the party's governing philosophy.
"I can tell you none of us wants to spend a minute longer in the minority than we have to, but I think we recognize that this is not a loss where you can just repackage the same agenda and move ahead," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who coasted to re-election by campaigning against "earmarked" spending for lawmakers' pet projects and for comprehensive immigration reform. "We need a major course correction, and some of us have been making that argument for quite a while."
Just what that course correction will be -- a return to the party's small-government roots, a new centrism or something else -- will take shape as surviving Republicans choose new leaders, decide how to work with the new Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate and take sides in what will be a wide-open contest for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination to succeed President Bush.
The loss of the House was expected, but the loss of the Senate came as a hard shock to the party. The consequences are devastating to the survivors, who with their majorities also lose the chairmanship of every policymaking committee -- the power centers on Capitol Hill.
The post-rout housecleaning started first thing Wednesday.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced that he would step down, while back-bench fiscal conservatives led by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., began plotting a takeover.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I am always for legal immigration.
That is what this nation was built on.
Nonsense. The US is a former British colony founded by English and Scots-Irish. Immigration has brought us nothing but cultural and classical Marxism and criminality. Just look at the Rust Belt and the liberal Northeast urban hellholes for the legacy of immigration.
And are you for legal immigration of Arab Wahabbists? Nigerian scam artists? Honduran gangbangers? When Bush and this Congress roll out the welcome mat that is what you are going to get. And they won't be coming here with copies of the Declaration in their pockets.
I find this phrase infuriating. What the Hell is there to reform ? Immigration laws are already there, but nobody gives a damn about enforcing them.
This nation cannot take even legal immigrants forever. Unless a potential immigrant has something of value to contribute, I don't see the point of it.
We need to elect people who aren't afraid of their own shadows. This is a classic Newt moment. Where Gingrich always excelled was in finding positive ways to frame the message. That's the skill that is so sorely lacking right now.
Oh please, what message would that be, pray tell. If at all, it was automatically opposing Bush on the issue of the day.
Their message was that Republicans were evil and corrupt.
Just keep telling American voters that they're lazy and that "hard workers" have to be imported.Yeah,that'll get the votes in.(sarc)
This nation has plenty of room for more immigrants.
The problem is we are not teaching them to be Americans and to reject what was wrong with the nations they left.
This nation is a nation of immigrants.
Now, a nation has a right to pick those they allow in their nation, but the Statue of Liberty is what Americanism is about.
What the other nations reject, send to us, and with hard work and desire, they will succeed.
The problem is not immigrants, the problem is welfare and multiculturalism.
No, the US is (or was) a nation of Anglo-Celt descendants of British colonists. The Emma Lazarus poem is unique to the people from New York City who sponsored the Statue of Liberty project in the 1880's.
"The problem is not immigrants, the problem is welfare and multiculturalism."
Care to tell me how you are going to get rid of welfare and multiculturalism while importing ever more welfare and multicult constituents?
The way it always has, by turning them into Americans.
People come here because they do not like where they are, because America offers them something better.
What they need to learn is why America is better then the nations they left,what makes us different is our individual freedom.
We are nation of individuals, not tribes, racial or ethnic groups, as they are in those nations they left.
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