Back in the ’90s, I used to watch this show called “The McLaughlin Group” every Friday night on PBS. It was five political analysts arguing about the week’s events. Two McLaughlin alumni have great post-election analysis articles online today.<\/p>\n
First of all, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard has an article entitled Post Mortem: Why the Republicans Got Shellacked in the Midterms<\/a>. Now, Barnes is very conservative and I normally find myself disagreeing with him quite a bit, but this time he nailed it. He spelled out perfectly the reasons why the Republicans lost. It’s worth a read, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, McLaughlin alum Eleanor Clift has an article speculating on the direction a Nancy Pelosi-led House will take next year<\/a>. Again, right on. The Democrats have a choice in 2007. They can open all kinds of investigations and attempt to get revenge on the Republicans for 12 years of rule; or, they can look toward the future and come up with innovative ways to lead this country in a positive direction. The Democrats had better do the latter if they expect my vote in the 2008 elections.<\/p>\n Here in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr. lost and I’m not surprised. I knew he was going to lose when several hardcore Democrats told me within the past week that they DIDN’T plan to vote for Ford. They’re upset with his corporate-friendly\/Bush-friendly votes on the energy bill of 2005, the bankruptcy bill of 2005, the Iraq war, and the wiretapping bill of 2006. “He’s a Republican posing as a Democrat,” they told me. I understand their sentiment – the only reason I voted for him is because I wanted the Republicans to lose the Senate. If Ford runs for Lamar Alexander’s seat when it comes up, I may very well vote for Ford’s primary opponent, and maybe even Alexander (if he runs again) over Ford in the general election.<\/p>\n That’s all for now. Glad this election is behind us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the ’90s, I used to watch this show called “The McLaughlin Group” every Friday night on PBS. It was five political analysts arguing about the week’s events. Two McLaughlin alumni have great post-election analysis articles online today. First of all, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard has an article entitled Post Mortem: Why … Continue reading “Post-election wrap-up: Why Republicans got shellacked, a Pelosi-led House, and Harold Ford Jr.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}