Governing must be harder than it looks, since the Republican majority spent so much time rubber stamping, instead of actually coming up with their own ideas.

We have not yet begun to fight. Which is the problem.

Until the MSM beast is slain, there will be no progress. The MSM has become a blatant propaganda organ. The mushy middle that never pays attention to politics, but decides elections, gets the propaganda message indelibly imprinted in the brain. If those who generally oppose Democrats do not step up to provide an alternative to the MSM that reaches the mushy middle, winning will be rare.

As an adult, I prefer to govern myself. The more decisions left to politicians, the more likely the process will degenerate into corruption and other things not intended or wished for by the electorate. Therefore, I am a firm proponent of the policy that if you want something, you should strive as a free man or woman to get it on your own and not through the questionable largess of the political animal. State government is grossly overdone in many places (and certainly is way out of control here in the Peoples Republic of California).

I have no idea what Blagojevich is doing - he must have thought the 2006 kick was for himself, and not as much as nationwide.

And as for the others - 'we've spent 10 years breaking the system, now you go fix it in 1 year'. Sounds about right. I could be wrong, but I believe each of those governors came into town with a deficit. This dramatically limits what they can do, no?

Let alone the looming shadow of the unfunded pension liability - which has been grown by both D's and R's over the past 25 years. Few are even willing to touch that.

I submit that We the People of the United States need a recall inmore than one state. Madison thought though, if we want to give Bus and Cheney their well earned easy exits, we would have to impeach, and it is as hard as it should be. However, we have several mechanisms in every part of this nation that works with a recall: It's called Election Day. When that fails, we this thing which I hate, called Term limits.

Why are republicans such sore winners and sore losers anyway?

Yes Daryl... the Dems have been so gracious about their 2000 and 2004 presidential defeats. You make a fantastic point.

The question is "Why are partisans such sore winners and sore losers, anyway?" and the question answers itself.

the Dems have been so gracious about their 2000 . . . presidential defeat[]

Joel, really wanna go there?

Meanwhile the GOPers have been winning just about everything for 27 years, but you'd think from listening to all the whining that (a) the Dems have been in power and (b) the Republicans have been chafing under a monopolistic, Democratic political machine simultaneously driving the country and the Grand Old party into ruin.

If the Republicans think the country is so messed up, how do they factor in the salient point that they've been effectively running it for two-and-a-half decades now?

Mike:

My point isn't that either side is gracious in defeat or victory. It's that both sides are equally obnoxious when it comes to the other party.

As far as Republican dominance of US politics for the past quarter century... it's kind of hard to square that with the Democratic majorities in Congress for most of the past HALF CENTURY... Granted, I was only 13 when the republicans took the majority in Congress, so I don't know much about the political climate before that, but I think you're hard-pressed to argue that both sides don't share the blame for where we're at.

While my social conservatism leads me to lean Republican, I'm frankly disgusted with both parties, and consider myself independent. The way to convince me to look the other way on Democrats' social policy is to sway me on economic and/or foreign policy. Since those policies also alienate me, I have no choice but to side with the Republicans. But I really am open to being convinced by either party.

The things that lead me to believe that the country is 'so messed up' aren't going to be solved by raising the minimum wage, allowing organized labor to intimidate workers into unionization, limiting school choice, and half-hearted measures to make Congressional pork-barreling less transparent.

The "it's not our fault" strategy only works as long as you're out of power. If the Dems didn't break the country, they're not even attempting to do anything that will fix it.

To get back to this story, what was his 2007 tax scheme that House members crushed by a vote of 107-0?

The IL GOP has been a basket case for years. The Party is dominated by a moderate-to-liberal group of insiders that are nearly as liberal and every bit as corrupt as the Democrats.

The Party will take years to recover from corruption of George Ryan and the comically tragic reign of Judy Baar Topinka as party leader.

Add NY AG Cuomo to the list.

It's all fun and games-- all these folks just blindly pulling the lever for Dems because the newspapers make em out to be glamorous: Get those evil Republicans.

And then reality hits.