Was it something I said?

The massacre that so many foresaw took place on Nov. 2, and for once, I am speechless. I tried to rationalize before and afterwards, but I am still at a loss.

Yes, I have head the various explanations, but they all seem to be lacking somehow. Take those who say the Obama administration and its Democratic cohorts were all guilty of extending government’s reach into private enterprise and vast overspending. The one thing they had in mind was the stimulus package introduced after President Obama took office.

But there are a couple of points that need to be made here. One, even though this bill was vilified by every Republican in America, it did not keep any one of them from posing when projects made possible by this bill were in the papers. Two of those local projects are the new parking garage/office building to be erected at the Pikeville Medical Center and the building that will soon house Pikeville College’s School of Osteopathic Medicine. Both are being built with stimulus funds.

Sen. McConnell’s supported a stimulus bill similar to Obama's, Bush 43’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. He took some heat from the voters, but was around to cast aspersions against those who supported Obama’s bill.

Then there are those who cite the left-leaning legislation adopted by the Democrat-controlled Congress and President Obama; i. e., Obamacare. This, said the loyal opposition, was nothing short of socialism. Of course they said this about Obama when they weren’t calling him a Fascist or a radical Muslim.

Funny thing about taking that tack, especially when one of the chief complaints to voters about Obamacare was that it was going to bankrupt Medicare. That was the rallying cry; Obamacare was going to cut $500 million from Medicare. Almost makes you wonder if the conservatives leading this charge had any memory of what they said about Medicare when it was enacted.

Some of the Monday-morning quarterbacks are of the idea that this election was a mid-course adjustment. What happened as a result was the electorate simply ousted the liberals who were busy, well, doing whatever it is that makes us hate liberals so.

That notwithstanding, a lot of the victims of the Nov. 2nd purge were Blue Dog Democrats. Across the south, mid-west, and west, time and again, these stalwart defenders of conservative values went down to defeat to their Republican opponents.

One of these Members of Congress was Democrat Rep. Rick Boucher, from the 9th Congressional District of Virginia. Here was a Congressman who was a staunch supporter of coal and yet had to defend himself against the charge that he was joining in Obama’s so-called war on coal. Even a commercial from the founder of United Coal Company was not enough to save his job.

No, the voters have spoken. Now the GOP has its majority in the House of Representatives back, and they are free to begin their quest to restore sanity to our government. First up will be to balance the budget by responsible spending, and they hope to start that by making permanent the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of the country, even if it does add another $700 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.

How did Einstein define insanity again?