It looks like the House and the Senate have switched control. Allen is behind by about 7k votes and although there will be a recount, it doesn’t look like that will help. Lieberman might just become the most powerful person in the Senate, forcing the Dems to move more to the right. This is probably a bad thing for the GOP’s chances to recapture the Senate, however if we can keep the White House and recapture the house in 2008 we’ll be good.

The mainstream media (and I include Fox News in that category) is labeling this as a referendum on Iraq. I don’t buy it. First off, the president’s party always loses lots of seats in the second midterm election. Second we lost about 6 seats due to our own incompetence and corruption: Foley, Delay, Ney, etc. There were more seats where Republican incumbents retired in largely democratic districts. The deck was stacked against our win from the beginning.

I was just on a blogger call with Jack Kingston (R-GA). He basically reiterated what conservatives & libertarians have been saying all summer: We need to go back to the GOP that gave us the Contract with America. We need to avoid scandal. The class of ‘94 was elected in part because of the House banking scandal. What is interesting is that Kingston doesn’t feel that there is a consensus that we spent too much or too little federal dollars.

The rumors of an RSC slate of leadership candidates is growing. Now is the time for Pence, Flake, Shaddegg and the others to take on the appropriators, take on the win at all costs leaders and push for a more fiscally conservative GOP.

Now that the GOP doesn’t have the majority, we can’t control the flow of debate in the Capitol. We will need to rely on alternative media outlets. Blogs, YouTube and other sources will me much more important to getting our message out. This is good because the GOP has never been able to frame the debate in our favor in the media. By building a grassroots support structure to get our message out while in the minority, we’ll be in a much better position to explain and sell our agenda when we do re-take the Congress.

As for the Democrats……

Speaker-to-be Pelosi is already talking about increases in the minimum wage, and spending more money on Medicare Part-D. Neither of these do I expect “Compassionate Conservative” Bush to veto. It will be interesting to see what the Dems decide to do about Iraq.

The Democrats also have unity issues. There were quite a few conservative democrats who were elected with the support of radical leftist groups.