What went wrong? 1. Personal loyalty and ideological purity were valued over operational competence. 2. The "war" against terrorism went off the rails almost immediately and morphed into the invasion of Iraq. 3, W stuck to his Texan "dance with them that brung you" approach and rewarded the wealthy and well-connected through tax breaks, non-bid contracts, and lax regulation, at the expense of the public interest. The Bush aides are focused on the wrong problem: it isn't the public's perception, it's the flawed performance of the Bush administration that accounts for its unenviable position in the history of this republic.

The one distinction your article missed to make was the fact that 75% of Americans supported the war on Islamic terrorism but not the war on Iraq; which they were duped into.That's why the GOP paid the price this election.
What went wrong was how Bush chose to wage that war.His choice of Iraq as the battle ground was wrong.Nationals from Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked us on 9/11 not Iraqis.How come we attack Iraq and not saudi Arabia or Egypt???.Bush promised to persue the terrorists and terrorist sponsoring states.Instead Cheney was having tea with them and Bush was begging saudi Arabia to increase its oil production the last time around!!!.
You can't fight succssfully if you don't know ur enemy from ur friends.That's why!!

The dilemma facing the Republican party is that they are currently incapable of acting like an effective minority party. Republicans will have to stop catering to a base that is increasingly out of touch and start showing initiative on issues instead of displaying reactionary "gotcha" politics. They will have to identify and appeal to moderate factions in both parties. They can only do that by getting off of a social conservative agenda that is not relevant to the maintenance of our economy.

Alton E. Drew
www.altondrew.com

Repubs had no problem with helping Bush bankrupt our country with deregulation and help for Bush allies and methodical erosion of functional bureaucracies. Now, they care about how the people's Money is spent. They should have started with yelling about Paulsen giving money to banks that didn't seem to have any problems until a "few months" before Bush leaves office. Suddenly, they are insolvent? Ha. Now, he give a private equity firm, Cerebrus, 6 billion, under the guise of helping an automobile company. I didn't see any protest about this from this "suddenly got frugal religion" bunch.

Bunch of whiners and dead-enders who hope they can campaign about frugality in 2010. When you consider the source, you understand why this is laughable. Boehner and McConnel,hey, maybe they jealous like Chippy.

If Republicans have to ask what went wrong they need to resign their seats in the House and Senate. They aligned themselves with the Bush Administration even though a majority of the country did not favor the war in Iraq.

During the election they allowed the religious right to dictate what to say and do. In essence they were totally out of touch with the people they represent.

Unless they show support to the new administration and work to get this country back on tract they will find they have lost even more seats when the 2010
elections roll around.

Puh-leeeease! The reason the GOP is irrelevant is because the demographics in the country have finally shifted away from bigoted, redneck, Southern, evangelical, right-wingnut, racist crackers. The only thing these "conservatives" were trying to conserve was their own class-based, white-power structure. Talk about entitlement issues!

Screw 'em. I don't lament their falling into the steaming dung pile of history.

www.need4trth.blogspot.com

As many who understand have said clearly, our so called repentant republican brothers and sisters, are just beginning to show their true intentions of becoming obstructionist and nay-sayers to moving America along. I don't think their intentions are anything but obstructionistic.