Many Republicans still don't get why they lost the election. Take Florida U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, as the joke goes, please! He blames everyone but himself. Rep. Shaw believes that had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resignation been before the election, that he and many other Republicans would have won reelection. "My first impression was that the extra votes that I needed would have been there," said Shaw. Really, in Shaw's mind it is Bush and Rumsfeld's fault that Shaw lost reelection to Democrat Ron Klein. Shaw is in denial. He himself said in the same interview, "I stayed loyal to the president. I believe in this president, as a Republican, I have the responsibility not to run away from the president unless I clearly think he is wrong." Well maybe Mr. Shaw you lost because the people don't want a rubberstamp congressman, or because the people didn't believe in this president and because you believed in a president the people didn't believe in they didn't believe in you, or maybe it is because as a Republican you didn't give any dissent because your loyalty was to your party and not your constituents. Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose because of Bush and Rumsfeld, Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he stood by them when the people wanted action from their representative not more of the same lip movement. Rep. Clay Shaw and the Republican Party cried wolf one too many times. They try to demonize the Democrats every election but this time the people saw the Republican Party as the party in power, the party that mismanaged the Iraq war, mismanaged Hurricane Katrina, mismanaged the budget, mismanaged the Mark Foley scandal, mismanaged themselves as their own were convicted of bribes and other misdeeds. Where was Rep. Clay Shaw on all these matters? He was silent and nowhere to be heard from...
Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose reelection because Rumsfeld resigned after the election instead of before it. Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he was part of the corrupt Republican Congress that has mismanaged the country for the last several years. People are tired of the old political party hacks; they want their representative to standup to corruption and mismanagement even if it goes against their own party. If Shaw had any gonads he would have stood up to his own party but he didn't because he was nothing more than a rubberstamp for the Bush Administration and the big spending Republican Congress...
Rep. Clay Shaw said, "I wouldn't have run this time," if he thought the Republicans would be the minority party because, "I've been in the minority and it's frustrating." Well fortunately for Clay Shaw and for us, he lost and won't have to be part of the minority party in Congress...
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