Careful what you wish for

The Democrats took the House last night, and are ever-so-slightly favored to prevail in the Senate as well. I have mixed feelings about the results, as I would have probably preferred split control (I'm all about government gridlock.) If there was any doubt that I'd vote for John McCain in 2008, a fully Democratic congress will remove the last vestige of uncertainty.

The big positive, I hope, is that Bush and Republicans take a message from this election. Stop being the party of corrupt knuckle-draggers, and get back to being the party of small government and lower taxes. Stop focusing on a spiteful right-wing social agenda and start focusing on a right-wing fiscal agenda. While I have little faith in the Democrats to actually accomplish anything with their newfound power, I am (perhaps naively) hoping that this loss will cause the GOP to have a "come to Jesus" moment, where they re-examine their hateful, uncompromising, and miserably failing social platform of the last six years.

But anyway, Dems, while you're in office, let's try to undo some of the damage caused by the Bushies. Here are some ideas for your first 100 days in power:

• Reinstate the ban on assault weapons, now. I know that deer can be pretty tricky to shoot with high-powered, merely semi-automatic rifles, but a small increase in the deer population is a risk I'm willing to take if it means that criminals won't have AK-47s.
  
• Pass a balanced budget bill. Government needs to be smaller.
  
• Fund stem cell research. Science > mysticism.
  
• Extend (or make permanent) the Bush tax cuts. In six years, he did a single thing right. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
  
• Come up with a new plan for Iraq. I'm not expert enough to know what the right path should be, but I'm smart enough to know that the current path we're on is leading to disaster. Nuke the place, set a timetable to pull out our troops, divide it into three countries...I don't know, but do something different.
  

Most of all, try to remember this: You got elected because the Bushies strayed too far from the center. You have a chance to claim the center for yourselves now and keep the Republicans on the margins. If you reject that opportunity, and fall back on your liberal leftist leanings, you're going to be on the sidelines, again, in two short years.

Speaking of leftists, Vermont elected a socialist to the Senate. Nice work, idiots. There's a place for intellectual midgets like you, but it's not in this country. Go join the rest of your socialist buddies in the unemployment lines in France. But quit living in my country, the one that's given you the wealth and free time to sip latte in your BMW as you rail against the horrible injustices of free markets.

California voters, at least, did the right thing and rejected both communist propositions on their ballot. Maybe I'll stop referring to them as a communist state now, and welcome them back into the U.S.A. (in place of Vermont, of course.)