Oh. it hurts.

They did it.

We lost it.

Why? Too much moderatin'. Not enough Conservatism.

A few guesses on my part:

1. The Left only saw the Battle of Iraq as a stand-alone item, and spun it that way all day long. If there had been a successful effort to tie Iraq to the inaccurately named "War on Terror" the results would have been different. Iraq is a battle we may have just lost.

2. The Right was ignored on Immigration. In my estimation, the issue to fire up the base with some crossover appeal was the area of illegal immigration. Banning gay marriage was used and seemed to work well enough in 2004, but if in stead,the issue had been immigration related, there would have been crossover appeal, without losing the patriotic "evangelicals."

3. Bush allowed his fear of the nebulous "Health Care" issue back him into a position where he passed the Medicaid prescription drug benefit and at the same time promised a budget breaking benefit which only pays lip-service to the issue. The key here is "Budget breaking."(The affirmative direction he should have taken on this issue was to create an atmosphere where groups of individuals could band together and buy health insurance at reduced rates. That's what big business does, right?)

4. We all forgot to focus on the Judges. Alito and Roberts need friends. Quite unlikely to happen now.

There are other reasons, but these matter a great deal.

Oh, and watch the way we treat a loss. We won't be bitchin about recounts. We lost. We'll deal with it like grown-ups.