Bailey's Musings: My Response

Issac J. Bailey writes a perspective piece called Musings on the '06 election and says the main point of the power shift in Washington occurred to hold the GOP accountable for their missteps.

The first part of this op-ed is about Iraq. I agree with his conclusions on Iraq, except to add that Iraq only became a central front in our country's fight against terrorism after we invaded. However, we broke it so we have to fix it.

The politics of fear did not work because we are tired of being told that we need to surrender bits of our civil liberties and allow this and future presidents more and more power. We are also sick of the corruption and partisanship that rule Washington.

Yes, Mr. Bailey I do Remeber Lindsey Graham bucking his party by joining the "Group of 14" and preventing the Senate from being changed permanently to accommodate quick confirmation of judges, but without much though for what would happen should Democrats control the White House and the Senate. I agree with the contention that the GOP would have had no voice after the Democrats took the Senate had Graham not joined the "Group of 14" because confirming the judges alone would not have saved the party because they are in trouble with the base for overspending among other issues. In fact, the top reasons people gave for their votes were corruption, Iraq, and terrorism. Judges was nowhere on the list of top issues that decided votes.

Graham showed leadership when he bucked the base over the judicial confirmation issue and protected the Senate as an institution over the agenda of the party. He also allowed for other important legislation, such as the Defense Authorization bill, to move forward. If the nuclear option had been utilized the troops may not have gotten their money and that would have put them in danger. The Democrats already were and would have continued to slow committee progress to the point of no work getting done and this would have permanently stalled any hopes of having any other initiative pass.

They do still want to kick him out in two years because he had the temerity to stand up and tell them that they can't have everything they want and that a handful was better than nothing. These people also do not like him being friends with John McCain or working closely with Hilary Clinton. They seem to prefer bitter partisanship to working out differences and being able to trash the Democrats instead of allowing Graham to work with them and possibly get them to compromise on reforming Social Security, an issue important to many. They would rather have all their judges than allow for opportunities to have an upperhand on other policies.

Graham's lesson to all of us is that our system is made to work in a fashion that will give us good policy even if it is a compromise. We will still get good judges even though those originally put up may not be confirmed.

Fear doesn't Rule the Day: Reason Does

The Democrats have taken the House and may yet take over the Senate. These next two years will not be that dark because the Democrats will have to govern from the center due to thin margins of victory.

The terrorists have not won and our freedom still exists. Osama Bin Laden doesn't care how we vote because he will try to kill us no matter who is in power. I had no idea that the voters were on any type of hook. The people voted the GOP out of power on issues, of which corruption was the most important. No where did gay marriage show up on the radar as a reason for the vote going the way it did.

It is hard to argue that the democrats are allowing the terrorists easy access to the country when it is President Bush that did not enforce our immigration laws and the Republicans did not start to move on the issue until before the election and then passed a border fence and didn't fund it. Also, we lost a valuable immigration screening program when the Department of Homeland Security was created.

Democrats love the country as much as Republicans do; they just have different ideas. The major complaint, though it doesn't come across is lack of checks and balances. The Republicans (George Allen) is being investigated for robocalls that mislead voters to the wrong polling places.

It is crazy to say that they will rob us of our virgins. It is not fair to call people morons under these circumstances. They only wanted to make a point to Republicans that they were not going to allow them to forget where they came from when they were elected.