November 8, 2006 - An Election of “Firsts”

This election brought a number of remarkable “firsts.”

The U.S. House of Representatives will be led by the first woman speaker (Nancy Pelosi); the U.S. Senate will induct its first socialist member (Bernie Sanders); the first Muslim-American was elected to Congress (Keith Ellison from Minnesota); for the first time ever the majority of Americans voted on electronic “black box” voting machines; and here in Maryland a “third-party” candidate for a statewide race was able to participate in (most of) the debates (the Green Party’s senatorial candidate Kevin Zeese.)

But of all the “firsts” perhaps the best is that for the first time since 911, a majority of the national electorate cast their votes out of hope and not fear.

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November 8, 2006 - The “Gingrich Revolution” and Rovian Dreams of a “Permanent Republican Majority” are Dead!

This election revealed that in its current incarnation the Republican Party has devolved into a Southern extremist sect whose core members are primarily motivated by their hope of turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy.

Voters abandoned the Republican Party in droves not because their leaders failed to live up to their supposed conservative ideology, but because in the wake of Enron, 911 and Katrina, the ideology of unrestrained corporate greed and ineffective government has no potency.

But in the final analysis this election was mostly about the rejection of Karl Rove’s politics of fear and demonization, which is bound to fail when an arrogant, incompetent and scandal-ridden party employs it.

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