Oh, I think you had the republican vote. What you didn't have are those who cross party lines to vote and don't adhere to either the label of democrat or republican.

Alrighty; show me those conservative Democrats. The only one I can think of is Bob Casey (on abortion), who's a populist on everything else. Even the republicans who won - like Arnold - had to shift left.

What happened was that key conservative ideologues - Santorum, Pombo, etc. - were voted out. The Dems now hold the political center, and if the Rs become more conservative, they will be further and further marginalized. Sorry, but that's how I see it. This country can only be governed from the center.

Bouldin - Lieberman, for one. And Ford ran a campaign right of the party on a lot of issues. He certainly said God a lot. (Look out Lamar! - he's coming for you.)

Alrighty; show me those conservative Democrats. The only one I can think of is Bob Casey (on abortion), who's a populist on everything else. Even the republicans who won - like Arnold - had to shift left.

Look at the Dems who got elected out west. The ones who got elected in Montana, Arizona, and Colorado are hardly even mainstream Democrats. They ran as Dems who pledge to do what the Republicans ought to be doing. Candidates like Pawlenty in MN, Crist in FL, and Pahlin in AK got elected in a hostile environment because they stuck to principles of sound Conservative governance. I'm going to have to back Karol on this one.

And you should know better than to assume California has any connection with the real world.

Though Crist ran to the left of Jeb.

Yeah Ford will be back and Lamar! may be in a bit of trouble if that's the way Ford goes. I also think Steele will be back.

Crist is not the conservative that el Jebo is and is one of the more moderate figures in the FL GOP (remember Tommy Gallagher ran to his right). There are very few conservatives in the current FL GOP who might be able to win a statewide race (Ander Crenshaw maybe).

We have to take care not to make the mistake of confusing populist Dems with conservative ones. I would say Tester and Webb for example are more populists than conservatives. While populism and conservatism can often co-exist on a number of issues, namely economic, they are often at odds with one another.

Webb (if he truly carries Virginia) is basically a Rednecks' Rights Democrat. (As a libertarian redneck, I have to admit to a certain ambivalence about that....) He did in fact resign from Reagan's cabinet, but he did so because he thought Reagan was wussing out re: Navy funding.

In other words, Reagan's Administration wasn't "Conservative" enough for good old Jim.

In other other words, he's probably not going to get many invitations to Chez Pelosi for cocktails and canapes...

It will be interesting to see how many of the "conservative" or "centrist" Dems will really vote in a conservative or centrist manner. Some of us are old enough to remember Bill Clinton circa 1992.

Dude...anyone reading this post who is not " old enough to remember Bill Clinton circa 1992."

Should be beaten. With a shoe.

I think Karol's comments on corruption and mismanagement are right on, that is what this election was about (probably more the mismanagement).

I disagree with the "country is conversative" line. The country is fairly middle of the road. When either party drifts towards and occupies that center, they clean-up. When they drift away from the center, they get cleaned-out (especially when their leader is incompetent to boot).

This was an election of relief for me. I'm not sure I'll ever get "excited" about an election result again. The last time I was excited was Clinton in '92 (when I was a naive freshman in college), thinking it marked a real sign for change that would lead America into the next millenium. '96 was not excitement, it was just "disaster averted" and, well, all the other elections have sucked until this one.

But I don't have any faith in the Democrats -- none, nada, zippo. They are not unified and they don't have a vision. But, they are not scary, neo-con, reshape the world, bible thumping, flag waving, jingoistic, moralizing right wing nut jobs. And that's about the nicest thing I can say about them.

Moving back to Karol's point, what this country needs more than Democrats or Republicans is competent politicians who are beholden to the people and not to a party, who lead in order to provide a better life for their grandchildren, rather than their personal life and power over the next 2-3 years, who are honest and straightforward and don't play political games and talk in Orwellian double speak. If we can get more of those politicians, regardless of what party they are, THAT will improve this country.

My dream is that some day, liberal Republicans and conversative Democrats will wake up, say to each other, "why the F are we dealing with the dead weight extremists", form a new party and lead with some sanity. You know as well as I do that an organized, enconomically moderate-to-conservative, socially mainstream party would be an unstoppable force -- organized probably being the key word as to why it won't happen, mainstream views don't get people motivated to mobilize and try to change the world, it is why the "base" matters so much in both of our misguided parties.

Why not?

Webb is their darling.

Regardless of what issues he campaigned on-as far as I can discern other than making conciliatory gestures towards a nuke-seeking IRI and drawing down in Iraq there were none of any substance-he will vote with the Democratic Party ninety percent of the time, with a few rare exceptions, e.g. gun control, maybe for a few cosmetic restrictions on abortion.

He abandoned most of this beliefs-again, with the exception of Iraq and his detestation of the Bush family-in order to exploit the Dem. Party apparatus, so I don't see why he would return to his roots once he's sworn in.