Time to be realists, folks.  I know that anything can happen, but for the most part, polls are not that far off.  The GOP--my party--is going to get smoked on Tuesday.  Now, it won't be a sea change, the Dems will likely have only a few seat majority in the House, and not likely any at all in the Senate.  We can't spin the loss, however.  We've got to be adults and realize why we didn't keep the people's trust. 

Why doesn't this administration insist that we citizens participate more in the war effort?  I don't know how you do it, but in the day, they sold war bonds, and held patriotic rallies.  They enlisted the aid of sympathetic film makers and made great propaganda films like "Why We Fight".  The best kind of propaganda--the kind that reminds us who we are as a people, and why we are doing what we are doing, why our men and women are being killed and maimed in a nation far away that seems so very ungrateful for our help. 

This administration, this Congress, has failed to make the war on terror real for most people.  Other than the nightly news showing us how many of our troops have died or been hurt on a given day, what more is there for us to see?  Does the Iraqi government, do the Iraqi people, realize just how fragile our support is, how little Americans care about Iraq in the long term?  What is this President doing to assure that they know that our patience as a nation is running thin, thin, thin? 

And don't get me started on illegal immigration.  We've got a 20 year old law, passed while a great American, Ronald Reagan, was president, called Simpson-Mazzoli.  Many of us took it seriously and made sure that those who we hire to work for us at our offices and homes are legally here.  However, corporations and Big Agriculture, who provide what I think Jesse Unruh called the mother's milk of politics (money), seem to own both the GOP and the Dems, and they get away with murder in hiring illegals.  Wages are driven down, welfare costs are up, schools are overcrowded, yet profits continue to rise. 

I've said it before.  The GOP deserves to lose.  Now, I live in California, and I voted for Arnold and McClintock the other day at the Central Library, so I've done my share of supporting Republicans.  But, ultimately, the failures I've noted above, among others, are why many people will not vote for the GOP, if they vote at all.  Religious conservatives (and many of us) are appalled by the cover given to Congressman Foley by the rest of the House leadership.  How ridiculous is it that Foley headed a committee about child abuse?   Do you all think we are stupid?

So, when we lose on the seventh, I assume this will just mean gridlock for the next two years.  Of course the President will veto more because he'll have to.  I don't think gridlock, nothing getting done, is a bad thing, do you?

And, out of the ashes of 2006, will come 2008.  Michael Steele may not be elected in Maryland, but what a fresh attitude and he will bring to the ticket in 2008.  I can see it now, John McCain and Michael Steele!  Winners in a landslide.