Opinion - It's over... but it isn't

It’s over… but it isn’t

That’s My Opinion

By Bob Robinson

Nov. 5, 2010

First of all, my congratulations to all winners Tuesday. Yes, that includes Democrats, although I have to admit they’ll be hard to find in Ohio.

Voters across the country soundly smacked the Democrat agenda Tuesday, turning state seats over to Republicans, handing the U.S. House of Representatives back to Republicans and taking the super majority away from Democrats in the Senate.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, the Reps control both houses of the Ohio Legislature and all statewide offices.

Boehner is easily going back to D.C., likely as the new House Majority Leader. Pelosi has been stripped of her power.

Harry Reid barely squeaked out his win over TEA candidate Sharon Angle to go back to D.C. as Senate Majority Leader, but he no longer has the power to stop a Republican filibuster of some of the more egregious plans the Dems had for us in 2011.

The Reps still have a tough job ahead of them.

It’s unbelievable the damage that can be done in such a short time by a left-wing – in my opinion socialist – leadership in our nation’s capitol.

Hundreds of billions of dollars were extracted from this and future generations to exponentially grow government at the expense of our economy. Under President Obama’s leadership, unemployment jumped to 10 percent and has stayed at 9.6 plus since 2009. We now have nearly 200,000 new Big Brother bureaucrats, while state governments have lost 6,000 jobs, local governments have lost 128,000 jobs and the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like the only thing we’ve stimulated is the federal government!

Massive bailouts, government takeovers, trillion dollar debts… Obamacare. Okay. Enough of that. You know the gruesome details as well as I do.

Everywhere I go people are elated, yet a little nervous. I understand the elation… and I understand the nervous.

We now have an opportunity to save the country our forefathers founded, but we also have to understand that it isn’t going to be easy.

Note that I’m not just talking about the last two years. Maybe we should be thankful to the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress for finally waking us up. This downhill slide has been going on for decades… Republican? Democrat? All are equally to blame!

Unfortunately, while not irreversible the damage is extensive. I don’t believe we’ve even begun to anticipate the ramifications of trying to get us back on track. In medical terms, emergency surgery is needed! We may even need a ‘crash cart’ and other ‘life support’ systems.

Recovery is going to be long and painful.

Whether or not you realize it, we now have three strong political parties. The Dems may be running for the hills right now, but they’ve done that in the past and have always come back. Then we have the traditional Reps, who sometimes have difficulty deciding whether they are conservative, liberal or somewhere in between.

And we have the TEA Party. They may carry the name of ‘Republican’ but they are far different than the Reps we’ve known in the past. When they say, “return to the Constitution,” they mean it.

Whether the rest of the Republican power structure is ready to listen to the people and take that step remains to be seen. If they don’t, there’s another election two years down the road.

As far as Obama’s “Mia Culpa” press conference on Wednesday is concerned, don’t get too excited. He reportedly told one of his liberal support groups on that same day to hang in… he wasn’t about to abandon his ideals.

On the news this morning, he told a “commiserating” CBS news correspondent that the problem wasn’t his agenda but rather his communication of that agenda to the voters. For a brief instant I thought the two of them were going to burst into tears and hug each other.

So here’s the scenario for 2011: We have a socialist president with veto powers who still doesn’t get it, a Senate that still leans left, a decidedly left-wing traditional media base, and a House that is controlled by two factions of conservatives… rank-and-file Republicans and TEA Party Republicans.

The Reps must find their united ground if they are going to be successful against the liberal base that still exists in our nation’s capitol. They must not give the left a foothold by fighting among themselves.

Change in Washington is going to be slow and controversial. Frankly, I think our biggest hope is in the massive state victories across the country.

The feds won’t make it easy, but states can still clean their own houses… with or without them.

My money is on the states. They can – they must – set the example for the next two years. If the feds still don’t get it by then, there will be more housecleaning in 2012.

The election may be over, but the work to be done isn’t.

That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Bob Robinson is the retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio. If you wish to receive a daily notification of his comments, opinions and reports, send your email address to: opinionsbybob@gmail.com. Feel free to express your views.